I remained absent from town again all day, though I can hardly say that I have a sufficiently good account to give of my time to compensate it. My morning was spent partly in the garden, partly in reading. Finished the first volume of Chateaubriand’s Etudes Historiques. It is after all nothing but a skeleton. Mere annals so dry that I do not wonder at his saying in his Preface, nobody would read the book.

Afternoon, I continued the work of pasting in labels into the smaller volumes, occasionally dipping into them—Among others, the works of Crebillon the younger.1 A French Writer who has done his utmost to deprave the imagination of his Countrymen. It is singular how much more of this style there is in French than in English Literature. The morality of France always has been very poor in its quality. But the reigns of Philip the Regent, and Louis the 15th completed the perversion of it. It is to be hoped that among the good effects of the Revolution this will prove one of the greatest. Private morals are the great foundation of a State.

Evening, at Mr. T. Greenleaf’s. A few of the Quincy People. Conversation.

Morning cloudy and looked very much like rain. The first thing that was announced to us was that the Baby had been sick during the night. She has so little sickness, that at this Season any thing like it alarms us. She was better during the day.

I remained quietly at home all the morning. Read the Preface of Bolingbroke to his Dissertation upon Parties, and some of this piece itself.1 I find my views of the English History during the Stuarts generally born out by him. He has some power with his pen though he is frequently faulty. Spent an hour comparing and correcting MS Journals with my father,2 and then rode in the Carriage with my Wife to Boston.

A dinner at Mr. Bradlee’s.3 Company consisted of Mr. Brooks, Sidney and his Wife and Henry, Mr. Frothingham and Wife, Mr. J. D. Bates,4 a Mr. Teschemaker, and Mr. Mier, besides F. H. Bradlee and his Wife.5 The dinner was quite a pleasant one. The two foreigners with the singular names did a great deal to enliven it. It is a little remarkable that the first of the two should have been an Englishman. 366We left the table before six and returned directly to Quincy. I was fearful I had been imprudent in diet, though I know not why. I did not suffer.