Morning quite unusually cold for this season of the year. I went out but did not remain long at the Office as I wished first to go to the Athenaeum and afterwards to join my Wife in a visit to the Painting 272rooms of Messrs. Alexander and Harding. I procured at the first place two or three new books which I look over as a kind of amusement. Mr. Harding has been painting Mrs. T. B. Adams, a picture as good as any that he paints and which only makes one turn away from the vanity of all such matters. Mr. Alexander has been taking a picture of Edward Brooks’ little daughter which is tolerably pretty. But I think such things are rather foolish indulgences for features change and if the picture is not itself good, it becomes but so much wood and canvass.

Home to read Juvenal. Afternoon, amused myself part of the time in reading and part in copying some old MSS which are important to the reputation of my grandfather. He was one of the battered characters of the day. Evening Read to my Wife aloud from Dacre, a fashionable novel,1 until nine when we went to a party at Mr. Edward Miller’s. Company very mixed and not very entertaining to me. Home early.

Cold weather. I went to the Office as usual. Time partly occupied in Accounts and partly in conversation. Mr. Walsh came down and got into one of his long talks so that I effected little. No further Accounts from Washington. Politics all in the wind and I pretty tired of writing. My best plan is to get out of the scrape for the present.

Home where I occupied myself in reading the fourteenth Satire of Juvenal. Very good. I think the latter ones are all in very superior style. Afternoon copied a letter of Mr. Stodderts about one of Col. Pickering’s charges.1 Read a little of Madame Deffand. Slow work. Evening read to my Wife from Dacre, an amusing book. Afterwards, redrafting the last of my Articles to the Pennsylvanians. I do not like it but am not disposed to work much harder upon it.

Morning cold. I amused myself with reading Coleridge’s Table Talk.1 It does not appear to me to equal his reputation. There is a 273constant seeking after unseekable things that betrays the visionary but not the first rate mind. He wants the healthy tone which is visible in all the conversation I have seen of Mackintosh.

Attended divine service and heard a Sermon from Mr. Frothingham upon the Advent, as an Anniversary. Matthew 21. 5. “Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek.” He is fond of taking some notice of these days as occasions for Sermons although not attaching to them the same sentiments which made them objectionable with the Roman Catholics. But the extremes of opinion always meet. The Unitarian who has gone far beyond the Puritan’s utmost verge, yet comes back to the Catholic fancy which was one of the causes of the first division.

Owing to an accident, I was late to the afternoon service. Mr. Frothingham’s discourse was however upon the parable of the talents, which I believe I had heard already. Read a discourse of Barrow upon the necessity of Industry. Eccles. 9. 10. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.” An excellent sermon. He considers the objects to be secured by it, health, wealth and honor, but above all virtue. I must look back to this discourse. Evening, went down to Mr. Brooks with my Wife and passed a couple of hours.