Went to town this morning. Received a letter from Mr. Hallett1 by which he makes it a matter of personal favour to be released from the publication of my letter. He says that they are winding up the con-289cerns of the old establishment and trying to form out of it a new one. My inference is that Mr. Kendall is the person relied upon for the latter, and hence the difficulty in my proposition. Perhaps there are some few of the Antimasons who might be unsettled by it. However this may be, my position is by it made curious. I am asked to sink what I maintain to be the sacrifice of a great public principle, as a matter of favour to an individual. Is this tenable in morals? I think not.

My answer2 was that I was willing to release him from the publication of my letter, that I regretted the circumstances which made it impossible for him safely to consent to it, but that I could not argue from the same data, and therefore could not deviate3 with him so far as to suppress my sense of the act of Mr. Kendall. My request now was that he would explain away his praise of that letter, and I intimated that I held the correspondence ready for publication at a favorable opportunity. The remainder of my time in Boston passed at my house and in commissions.

Home. Afternoon, at my house where I was provoked by the dilatoriness of Mr. Ayer as usual and then home where I read a little of Lessing and Humboldt whose statistical account of Mexico is quite interesting. Evening at home.

My day was taken up much as usual. I laid out some work for the men at home and then went to my house with my boy John who amused the workmen there much with the number of his questions. It was very warm, but this day the Masons finished the inside walls of the house and nothing now remains but the finishing. They are slow about this.

Home where I read a long passage of Homer. I now find it so easy that I shall increase to a hundred lines. Also some of Humboldt which I continued in the afternoon and Lessing’s Laocoon. Evening to Mr. E. Miller’s where was a party of ladies, Mrs. Nicholson being singer. It was not very interesting and I returned home.

Arose very early this morning for the purpose of going by invitation with my father to Hingham on a fishing party. My impression was that 290we were to go down in a sloop but it turned out after reaching Mr. Loring’s that we were to go over to Cohasset. My father accompanied Mr. Loring, and Mr. Quincy Thaxter went with me.

We went down to Mrs. Nichols’, a place a mile or two beyond the house where I formerly stopped when here seven years ago. There we were joined by about twenty of the people of Hingham. A portion went out in boats and a part fished from the rocks. I was of the former number and did very well. The day was overcast with a fine breeze from the land and warm enough to make the sea air relish. But in the afternoon we had a severe thunder shower after we were housed. The house is a very poor one and the country is desolate enough. The Cohasset rocks form one of the most dangerous points upon our coast, in winter time. But there is something rather interesting at all times in the sight of the sea, and perhaps the sight of the effects it produces upon its coast is an addition to the idea of power and consequently of grandeur.1

We had a fish dinner from our own sport and were detained some time by the rain which was the stupidest part of the day. Mr. Brooks and Mr. Richardson Clergymen of Hingham were of the party, as also Mr. Solomon Lincoln and others. I was not struck so much with the intelligence as with the good disposition of the individuals who did every thing they could to make it pleasant.

On returning to Hingham, we went to Mr. Loring’s house where we had tea and met with a number of the ladies as well as gentlemen, after which we returned home by a clear moon, having had a far less fatiguing day than I have usually experienced.