The Season has been an uncommonly fine one this year, and though growing cooler is yet very pleasant. Morning passed reading Sir James Mackintosh, then to Meeting as usual. Mr. Frothingham preached all day. Morning from 2. Esdras. 1. 27. “Ye have not as it 171were forsaken me, but your own selves, saith the Lord.” It was upon the self-indulgence of men which subverted all ideas of duty. I did not follow it from my unlucky habit of abstraction. The Afternoon’s discourse was from Micah 4. 5. “For all people will walk every one in the name of his God, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.” The idea of the deity, the religion of man has been different in different ages. The worship of God has been construed often to mean the strangest series of actions. But the true worship is the cultivation of the virtues, to that let every one adhere. I will not say that I succeed in giving any notion of the Sermons, perhaps nothing more than my own reflections upon the Texts guided by what I hear.

Read a Sermon of Massillon upon the forgiveness of injuries. His division was in two parts. 1. The Motives to forgiveness derived from the insufficient reasons we have for hatred and revenge. 2. The rules of pardon, which he defines to require more than the false reconciliations among men. The character of Massillon’s Oratory is singular. It depends upon the meanest view of human nature. He seems to have read Rochefoucauld to some purpose. Take for Example his definition of the friendship of men. He says three motives cause it. Similarity in taste, Interest or Vanity. This may be true but there may be a mixture at least of something better. All his eloquence is therefore fulminating.

Evening, read part of the Life of George 4th. Thoroughly Foxite. E. B. Hall called and paid a visit. I continued Mackintosh and read my usual Spectators. The Woman continues about the same.

The day was lovely. I did not read any of the Oration because I went out earlier than usual. The days have become short and my hour is therefore very much pressed upon. Indeed I am much inclined to think I must give up my Greek for the Winter. So it is. My energy is fast disappearing. The common current of life is too strong for my swimming against it. And I must soon be content to be swallowed up in its vortex. The last six months have produced a wonderful revolution in me. They have done more to extinguish the fire of my character than years. Perhaps the reflection that I have a child has been the secret of it,1 that I am not a close in the course of the family. Be this as it may, here am I with much less spirit and more indolence.

Read a good deal of the Debates in the Virginia Convention2 and 172wondered at the folly of Mr. Henry who seems to have worked himself into madness at the idea of the grand consolidated government.

Took a walk. Afternoon read part of Cicero’s Lucullus. It contains an argument against the Philosophy which doubted of matter, but it requires with me a second perusal.

Evening finished the 1st Volume of the Life of George 4th and went to Mrs. Pickman’s party to the Bride Mrs. Smith. All the fashion there. Returned early. Read the Spectator. The Woman still the same.