Morning cloudy and warm with heavy rains, which came on at intervals more like the Summer than this season. I went to the Office, where after talking a little with Mr. Peabody, I sat down to my usual occupations. I read over carefully the pamphlet upon the subject of the Revolution and noted the passages upon which I desired information. Nothing of further moment occurred.

I returned home as usual and in the afternoon resumed and finished Cicero de Oratore. I have on the whole benefitted from this tolerably thorough perusal of this work. And although few ideas in it were new to me as they form the basis of all subsequent doctrines of eloquence, yet I have been a gainer by the study of a clear style, and the perception of beauties which never struck me before. Cicero was perhaps the greatest Master of the Theory of Oratory that ever existed, though perhaps in the practice he may have been equalled by Demosthenes. He understood the influence upon the passions so that when he speaks, we do not feel as if we were listening to a visionary. I should think that this very book was worthy of being always held as a Text book, although the influence of such a man as Edward T. Channing has rejected it at Cambridge.1

Evening, Corinne and after it, a visit from Mr. Edmund Quincy, so that I had little or no opportunity to continue my Catalogue, though I read two Numbers of the Tatler.