A clear cool day. I went to the Office. Time taken up in making up an Account for T. B. Adams and writing him a letter.1 I have been waiting for some time for the remittance promised by him but am tired and go on without it. Diary.

Walk with Mr. Walsh, then home. Livy. Afternoon, copying my letter. Mr. Price Greenleaf from Quincy gave me a call which occupied me the daylight. He is much as usual, talkative and communicative. Evening partly at home, partly at Mr. Brooks where there was a small 148company of the family including Mr. and Mrs. Parkman and Mrs. Hall of Medford.2 Nothing of interest.

I do not know when it has been that my Diary is more thoroughly devoid of interest, but so it is. Monotony personified.

A dark day with heavy rain. I went to the Office. Time passed as usual. Nothing of interest. I received a letter from my father.1 He approves of my Article upon the present state of things but gives me very sorry encouragement for the success of my course. I do not myself think it practicable in this Country to pursue any thing like an independent course and yet I am myself trying it. I cannot satisfy my conscience and do otherwise. My father’s opinion however is worth something to me. It at least shows there is one eye awake which sees and knows and understands my course.

Home. Livy. Afternoon reading Swift. His Essay on Conversation appears to me one of the best things I have ever seen of his. His style may be said to be transparent. One can see the sense through without observing the medium. MS. a little. Evening at home reading to my Wife Tom Cringle’s Log.2 Afterwards Goguet.

Fine day, though windy. I passed my morning looking over a number or two of the Gallery of Portraits,1 then to Church. Dr. Lowell.2 I. Peter 4. 7. “The end of all things is at hand, be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer.” The Dr. did not exactly explain this hard passage, for he seemed to construe the end of all things as applied to any particular generation of men, to be death, in preparation for which they might be exhorted to sobriety and prayer. Perhaps in all the new Testament, now eighteen centuries old, nothing is more calculated to suggest doubt than the frequent announcement of the end of all things then near.

Mr. Walsh walked and dined with me. Mr. Frothingham in the afternoon. Matthew 10. 16. “Be ye therefore wise as serpents.” Mr. F. 149tried to explain the distinction between wisdom compounded of prudence and knowledge, and cunning but I think he would have more fully illustrated his point if he had followed out the text which evidently qualifies this passage by adding “harmless as doves.”

Read a discourse of Dr. Barrow upon the Incarnation. Matthew 1. 20. “For that which is conceived in her is of the holy Ghost.” A mystery. Evening at home. Goguet, and Tom Cringle.