Weather Cold. I should like this Winter as I am now in a condition which will promise something like permanency, to set a Thermometer and record in a general way in this Book the various changes of our Climate.1 There is much that is curious to learn from this and much that remains in the memory to future times. I went to the Office and was hardly interrupted during the whole course of the morning. I began reading Pufendorf’s Devoirs de l’homme et du Citoyen,2 being his own abridgment of his larger work, and in order to exercise my skill in writing I began a translation of the Preface, which I found easy and pleasant. My idea now is to practice writing in all shapes until I get to a state satisfactory to myself, that is a state, when my pen will be a source of confidence. I accomplished five pages, in translation, and read the whole Preface. It put me much in mind of that of Jeremy Taylor, excepting that the one merely draws the lines between Natural Law and Theology, the other bases the latter upon the principles of the former and carries them out.

My morning was satisfactory. Mr. Brooks came in for a single moment to ask me to go to Medford tomorrow to which I acceded. The remainder of the time was usefully passed. After dinner I read for two hours to my Wife instead of the usual time in the evening, in the Story of Clarissa Harlowe. It is too long and minute. Trifles seldom deserve recording excepting in a Journal where they bore only the person interested.3 I read the usual quantity of Aeschines but found him rather harder than usual. I translated all I had done due yesterday and had time for a little of the Philosophy of the Ancients in La Harpe before going to Mrs. Frothingham’s after Abby who had passed the Evening there. I found them much the same and hospitable as ever, for they entertained me with Oysters and other nice things, and then we returned home.

The morning set in dark and hazy, and it soon began raining, and continued hard and steady during the whole day. I went down to the Office and sat there all the morning without serious interruption. I began the work of Pufendorf but unaccountably I could gain very 69little ground indeed in the pursuit of it. The author appeared difficult and my mind was in one of those moods when it seemed impossible to fix it to any thing permanent so that I spent the time in reading over the first Chapter without the Notes, which I postponed to some other time. But was discontented with my morning. I tried to see Mr. Brooks but could not succeed. Dr. Welsh came in for a single moment to inquire whether in making an appraisement of the books of a deceased person, they should be valued singly or in the Mass. I told him that I had in my brother’s case pursued the former plan and thought it much the most advisable, but was doubtful whether it was generally practised.

After dinner, I read a considerable portion of Aeschines and translated what I had read yesterday. But it occupied me fully for the entire afternoon so that I had the evening only which I passed in reading Clarissa Harlowe to Abby. This book possesses considerable interest although it does trail into interminable longueurs. Richardson had great talent at description and that until it extended to objects of the smallest and minutest nature–and his mind was not so exalted as to be able to look beyond them, at higher and more distinguished marks. I am glad to have a chance to read loud as it exercises my lungs which have been for some time unused to public delivery. After Abby retired I read La Harpe’s Chapter on the Philosophy of Plutarch.