Morning clear and cold. I devoted some time to making out my projected arrangement of coins and medals. Received a Note from my Wife requesting me to go to Medford which I accordingly determined to do.1 I therefore omitted divine service in the morning and reached Mr. Brooks’ to dinner.

Mr. Kent was there, a person come to take the place of Mr. Frothingham who had engaged to go. I attended in the Afternoon and heard him from Hebrews 13. 14. “For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” The old and general moral, the vanity of human hopes and prospects not effectively enunciated. The delivery of our Clergy is generally a miserable affair. This gentleman is not settled nor dependent upon the profession for a living.

I afterwards read a Sermon of Dr. Barrow. Corinthians 3. 17. “And whatsoever ye do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Of doing in the name of Jesus, what it means and how to observe the rule, the natural and forcible arrangement which he so invariably pursues. I was not in a way to read with the same profit as I do at home, but this of course. Nothing else was done. I passed the evening in conversation as Mr. Brooks as he grows older, grows more timid about his eyesight and reads nothing by candlelight.

Morning clear and pleasant. I left Medford and returned to Boston. Morning, passed quietly at the Office and at the Athenaeum whither I went for the purpose of examining one or two authorities for my positions in my last number of the Appeal. I also went to procure a new volume of Thiers and some work upon the collection and arrangement of medals and coins. I find my collection is a trifle—Not more than a thousand specimens including the Casket which I have never seen of ancient medals and coins at Washington.1 And the most valuable I cannot procure. I took out Pinkerton’s book which is a sort of elementary work.2

Home. Read a little of Gifford’s translation of Juvenal. But I must change my hour, for from some unknown cause I am always excessively drowsy just before dinner. It used to be afterward. Read Thiers, the 186treaty of Leoben. His account of the relations of the Directory with the United States shakes my faith in his whole book more than any thing I have yet seen. Thiers is a French Juggler without fixed principle. Madame du Deffand and Crabbe.

Evening, I walked out, calling to see Mr. Frothingham who is better. He was seated in his new study with his children about him, and looked very comfortable and gentlemanly. Home after an hour’s chat. Wrote over again my last page of No. 8 and corrected it. This task is done.