Fine morning. I concluded not to go to town today. My Mother received a letter this morning from my father mentioning the probability of his starting from Washington about this time, and my brother’s family is to accompany him.1

I continued reading Thucydides—The Funeral Oration of Pericles, which partakes much of that style which foreigners are fond of charging upon us. I am also reading Sydney on Government, a work written to refute the singular system of Sir Robert Filmer.2 It has many points, sarcasm, logic, ridicule, and vigor. But the only wonder is that a refutation should ever have been needed. The science of government has been prostituted to the designs of the few servile scoundrels who look to their own interest, cost what it may to the world.

Afternoon, finished the first volume of Seneca. Read also a part of the proceedings of the first Congress under our Constitution, relating to laying an impost.3 How the Southern section of the Union can get over it, I do not see. Evening quiet. My Mother does not seem well at all, today.