Fine day. I generally read German an hour after breakfast which reduces my Office time to two hours a day, as short a period as I can possibly give to business. Kirk called again and I was not prepared. Mr. Spear came in from Quincy, and paid me some money which 33together with some of my own yielded enough for Kirk’s present wants so that this was momentary relief. The New Engd. Shares will not sell. I must dispose of twelve. I could get no walk today on Account of this anxiety.

Home. Ovid. I shall not detail the particulars of every day’s duty performed. Suffice it to say that with the exception of the charm of my study, we go on now as quietly as we ever did at home. The children give us a little uneasiness, but thank God, at present, they look in tolerable health. This is my principal anxiety in life. In these I derive pleasures and hopes which the will of heaven must regulate and I will humbly continue under its guidance to entertain.

Fine weather. I finished Goethe’s Werther for the second time this morning and on the whole see no reason to change my former opinion of it. My next book will be Lessing’s Emilia Galotti,1 and for a singular reason. It is the book which was lying open in the room where Werther was found. Now I have a curiosity to know if there is anything in the piece which should have suggested the idea to the Author, of introducing it there.

At the Office. My anxiety considerable about the draught of John Kirk which I exhaust my own resources to meet. I am anxious to procure a part of the money in order to make immediate use of his consent to invest it. Nevertheless I gained my walk today and read the latter part of the ninth book of Ovid which is in the voluptuous style which he most particularly shines in. But he never reaches the sublimity of the first book. That seems to me to have been his Masterpiece.

Afternoon. Assorting papers which is my regular business. I read in the evening the remainder of Mansfield Park which though improving in the third volume yet on the whole disappoints me. Mr. and Mrs. Frothingham come in and passed an hour in the evening. He sounded me about my father’s inclination to accept a ΦBK Oration next Autumn. I discouraged the idea. His powers thus to be frittered away in trifles from year to year! And so it will be. A little of Emilia Galotti.