Another mild day. I went to the Office as usual and passed my time in the same way. It was cut up today partly by attending a Meeting of 234the Directors of the Middlesex Canal for the purpose of organization for the next year. I had also one or two interruptions. Took a walk to the Athenaeum. On the whole nothing to boast of in my morning. Read part of Quinctilian in the afternoon containing his distribution of the various species of Oratory and the subdivisions of which it is capable. In my opinion a great deal of time consumed in trifling matters. The subject of Rhetoric seems to me to have been very much mystified in former days. The division is simple enough, into deliberative, demonstrative and judicial. Though the second name hardly applies to the class it intends to cover.

Evening at home. Mr. Brooks took tea and spent two hours in conversation. So that I did not read. Afterwards I wrote a short letter to my father for the purpose of telling him what Deacon Spear requested as to the state of his farms at Quincy.1 But my Correspondence with him this Winter has amounted to nothing at all. Afterwards, the Odyssey and Guardians.

The Snow was falling heavily and the day was on the whole so cheerless that I did not stir out of the House. My habit of going to Church is now so fixed as to make it appear very strange to me to stay away. I employed myself singularly as it turned out. For in looking over some of my old attempts I read the review of Williston’s book with which I was so much pleased as to be tempted to cut out a part for publication. I accordingly copied about as much as I thought would do for Mr. Willard’s new Review.1 This and copying part of my father’s letter which I did not finish yesterday took most of the day.

Read over twice a Sermon of Massillon’s upon the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke 15. 13. “The younger son gathered all together, and took his Journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.” I thought it one of the best of his which I had read. He first examines the nature of the vices charged upon the Son, their degrading character both to mind and body and then explains the Charity and benevolence of the Deity in a case of Repentance from so hardened a state of guilt. This constituted about all my doings today and I was not a moment idle. Read the Guardian as usual.