Cool morning with a gradual clouding up as if at last it was likely to produce Rain. I went into town and was busy most of my time in a variety of Commissions which my Wife wanted performed. Went to the House and from thence to Mrs. Frothingham’s. After that I stepped into a grate factory and was so much pleased with one or two patterns that I ordered one to supersede mine in my sitting parlor. This is perhaps an extravagance, but I have deluded myself into the notion of it’s being economy, first, by preventing the necessity of such frequent repairs, second, by the lower price of Anthracite fuel.

At the Office, I read a little of Marshall. Returned home and passed the Afternoon quietly in my usual way, first, writing my Diary, second, reading Horace, third, looking over old Letters. This last was not so interesting today.

Evening at home. It began to rain. I read a little of Basil Hall’s travels, copied part of a letter of my father’s to Mr. Rush, and read the Observer. Cumberland has done something for literature in his account of the writers of the old Comedy in Greece. But he has done injury by depreciating the character of Socrates. No satisfactory evidence of his bad character exists while much of a noble philosophy remains under his name. This makes one point. Another is, that his personal character should not be traduced from the abuse of malicious enemies even though it might not have been perfect, at this time of day. The in-137fluence of that was upon his own age, that of his doctrines has been eminently beneficial upon every subsequent one.

A hard rain in the night with occasional showers through the day. Having made an appointment with the maker of the grate to take his measures at my house I went to town. My time was passed in a pretty useless manner with the exception that I finished Marshall’s Life of Washington. It is a work written without much pretension to style or interest, containing a good deal of valuable matter of fact but none of the speculative philosophy which might in this case have worked to great advantage. At the same time, it must be confessed that the use of it is not without danger.1 Perhaps the part of discretion is to avoid it.

Returned home and passed the Afternoon in my usual occupation—Horace three or four of whose Odes I endeavour to read daily and some of the old letters. They are in such a state of confusion that the endeavor to reduce them to order seems absurd. Yet who will ever do it? If I am to judge from the indications of the past five years, certainly not my father. Evening, read aloud some of that amusing book, Humphry Clinker.2

Morning cool and pleasant without a cloud in the sky. I remained quietly at home. My time with the exception of what was taken up by Horace, was entirely devoted to reading and assorting the old Correspondence. With what a mixture of feelings do I look over these old papers. They contain the secret history of the lives of a single couple—Joy and sunshine, grief and clouds, sorrows and storm. The vicissitudes are rapid, the incidents are interesting. Happy are those who pass through this Valley with so much of innocence. Vice stains no one of these pages. Occasionally there is fierceness of passion, but it commonly grows out of public events and has no accompaniment of bitter remorse and self upbraiding for the contamination of guilt. I think the gloomy predominates, and yet there have been few persons whose story altogether comprises so much of what the world calls prosperity. Look at the persons in a similar station with John Adams. Washington had no 138children and twenty years less of life. Jefferson died a bankrupt with bitter private griefs and nothing to compensate for them. Madison is childless though time has dealt mildly with him, and Monroe died a bankrupt after long years of pecuniary distress and mortification. Not one of these have had the closing consolations of John Adams. All of them have had their sceptres wrenched by an unlineal hand, no son of their’s succeeding. That pride was reserved probably to John Adams alone in this world. Who can believe there is not a beneficent though a just Deity, who measures out even in this life our portions of reward and retribution. Afternoon, read St. John. Evening, Humphry Clinker.