The Child has not appeared well within a few days. She shows sickness almost immediately. I know no anxiety equal to that which any symptoms of that kind in her create. My trust is always in a higher power, and yet I feel as if I was almost too deeply attached for this world. It brings it’s own punishment in the care it occasions.

Mild weather in the morning, but it cleared off cold at night. Went to the Office but my time was wasted. I had not my regular work, so I began a letter to my father but did not go on with it. Somehow I cannot write as I used to. The rest of my time was passed in destroying the remainder of the loose papers which had been in a box in my other room, and which I perceived today had been ransacked in all probability by some of my Office boys. A troublesome set which would joyfully be dispensed with by me if I could hit upon any other mode of getting my work done. Poor George. He had many, many good qualities. And when I remember what he might have been, it makes me feel more deeply the singular weakness of humanity.1

Walk. Afternoon, Anquetil. I find he was a Catholic priest which dissipates my wonder at his notions about religious liberty. Voltaire. And Alison. He lays it down that nothing in this world is in itself beautiful. Is this true? And if it is, does it not fundamentally destroy the argument of the existence of a deity from his works, or in other words, natural religion? To say that things are beautiful or sublime merely because the mind of man associates certain qualities with certain things, leaves every point to the decision of human caprice. If there is nothing beautiful or sublime in the material world but what is arbitrarily pitched upon by the fancy of man, it will be hard to deny the same assertion when applied to the moral universe. And where will this lead? But I am plunging deep into metaphysics.

My Wife took tea out. Family party at Mrs. Frothingham’s. P.C. and Gorham Brooks and ladies, Edward, Miss C. Dexter and Wife and myself. Tolerably pleasant. Returned at ten and got upon Architecture and building.