Morning warm but misty after which it cleared away. I went into town with Mr. Brooks. Time at the Office where I wrote my arrears of Journal which are constantly accumulating and then to the Athenaeum to get Books. I looked into the English Newspapers which are quite 333full of notices of our affairs. They do not at all understand the action of our Government. But our troubles may have a good effect in checking the licentious tendencies in Great Britain. what is the world coming to.

In the mean time poor General La Fayette is dead.1 His life has been a stormy one, but his character is highly honorable to him. There is no sort of guilt affixed to his public career, although he has lived in times of carnage and desolation. If he has not possessed the vigor which might have put him upon a level with Caesar and Cromwell and Bonaparte, he has at least avoided the disgrace of their crimes. Our Country was very certainly indebted to him largely, but for its credit it may be said that it was not insensible to it. Never did man have a more splendid triumph than his tour in 1825.

Home. Afternoon, Mrs. Inchbald. Company, but I did not see them.

I remained very quietly fixed at home today. Passed my morning which went off very rapidly in reading Schiller. I accomplished ten pages being the whole of the Account of the Execution of Counts Egmont and Horn. It is easy and very interesting. This seems like progress in my German. Read also the little volume of Horace Walpole’s Reminiscences,1 a pleasant little book which I have gone over several times with much gratification. Very desultory and perhaps for that reason more agreeable to me.

Afternoon, Edinburgh Review upon the state of French Literature.2 This and the Quarterly join in expressing their opinion of its unnatural state. The taste is for the horrible and the extravagant, for the unnatural and the infidel, for the disorganizing and levelling. Ovid, finished the first book of the Art of Love, and the first volume of my edition. Mr. Brooks dined in town. Quiet evening. Life of Mr. Jay.

Weather warm but pleasant. There was a thunder shower in the afternoon. I went to town accompanied by Mr. Brooks. Occupied at 334my Office in writing up Diary, then on the Athenaeum and from thence to my house. Thus the time passed, then to Medford.

Afternoon, read Mrs. Inchbald’s Life. A poor thing as ever was. Towards the latter part of the second volume the letters of Miss Edgeworth are introduced which are worth all the rest put together. The more I see of that lady, the more I admire her. She represents more fully the English character in its best condition than any body I know.

Ovid, Art of Love, second volume, which is prettier. One may trace in this book many of the notions which prevail with respect to women, as that deception is lawful, the modes of flattery, the excessive subjection to their will &ca. &ca. His particular fort lays in the illegible word the Grecian Mythology.1 Nothing else material. Received a letter from my father conveying some disagreeable news respecting Joseph H. Adams.2