Morning cool and pleasant. I went to town and was much occupied in my usual manner during my stay. At the Office where I wrote my 193Diary. Went also to the House where I found the people very quietly fixed. To the Athenaeum and to see Mr. Brooks. Thus my time vanished with very great rapidity, and I did not execute every thing I wished.

Called at the Advocate Office and gave Mr. Paine another Article upon Political Management. The Atlas is particularly wary in it’s controversy with Mr. Everett. The cue of the whole party appears to be silence, silence. Well, this will enable the Advocate to make surer work with the Antimasons. There being no contradiction in a single column of the Presses peculiarly belonging to that party, and most of them seeing no other, it may be regarded as insuring a degree of unanimity among them which we should hardly have expected.

Home to dinner. Afternoon Thiers, and Madame du Deffand.

Fine day but growing warmer. I read this morning Mad. Deffand and Pinkerton whose book is a curious mass of dogmatical accuracy. Attended divine service and heard a young man, H. G. O. Phipps preach.1 He is the son of the late Dr. Phipps of this Parish and therefore excited a good deal of interest. His sermons were from John 16. 32. “Yet, I am not alone because the Father is with me.” And from Romans 6.23. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” His divisions are sensible and his substance good. Young preachers have perhaps the greatest trial of all. They are tested most heavily before the mind is formed.

At home read a discourse of Dr. Barrow perhaps the most eloquent of any, from 1. John 2. 6. “He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also so to walk as he walked.” On the general topic of imitation and the effect of example, with some very forcible thoughts, especially in connection with the characters of the Old Testament.

The afternoon was quite warm. Evening Mr. Price Greenleaf and Josiah Quincy. The latter asked me to go with him to the White hills on Tuesday, which I declined.

Morning warm and the sun scorching. I remained at home, and read the fourth Satire of Juvenal entire. Some parts of it are as fine as any 194thing of his which I have yet seen, though the whole Satire may not be regarded as highly finished.

This morning brought me the second Paper upon Political Management very well printed. It will tell among our friends in Vermont. My time did not tell to the very best advantage and yet I managed to finish another Article for the Advocate under my old signature and in answer to the Telegraph which had a miserably poor Article commenting upon a Comment of the Centinel’s on my fifth number. I also picked out a paragraph from the Richmond Whig to be introduced with a comment.

Took a bath with my father at Mr. D. Greenleaf’s Wharf at noon. Afternoon, Pinkerton after finishing the last of the ten volumes of Thiers. An amusing and instructive history if not a perfectly substantial one in the theory upon which it is founded. Mad. du Deffand.