Another warm day. Shortly after breakfast I went to town and finding it difficult to make much exertion I concluded to remain at the Office and work over my Accounts. My principal occupation was to attend to the remaining arrangements for our comfort this summer which I concluded more satisfactorily to myself than I had expected. The difficulties of country life arise from want of provisions which the city must afford, but the transportation is the main thing. I hope I have now got the thing in order.

Returned to dinner and could not help feeling the delight of a free air and a cool room. My situation when I look at it compensates me for all my trouble, great as it has been. Afternoon, reading and arranging my books inside and my grounds about the house. Evening, Mr. and Mrs. Lunt called for an hour. And I retired earlier than I commonly do in town.

Morning warm. I remained at home quietly to enjoy the breeze at the house instead of rambling about the City. Walked down to the old house where I selected more books to bring out here and looked over the garden. The season is a remarkable one for vegetation. Every thing assumes a green tinge which makes the scenery unusually rich. I returned home and sat down to write a letter to my father which I made a long one, and which took the remainder of the morning.1

In the afternoon, I began the letters of Pliny the younger which I propose to read as my usual relaxation in the classics this Summer.2 And I continued Scrope. Writers on political economy make their books very uninteresting because they stuff them full of theories of their own without much reference to the inductive process which is the only philosophy. Evening at home.

Fine day and warm with a thunder shower and light rain before sunset. I occupied myself in reading, a luxury which is rather new to me of late, until the time for divine service when I attended and heard 65Mr. Angier preach from Mark 12. 30.1 “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength,” but I gathered little from the discourse as it was in the mystical, spiritual style which now prevails so much among us. Afternoon, Mr. Lunt preached, but as I did not gain my usual nap, I was not as attentive as I ought to have been. The congregation was uneasy from a different cause, the approaching storm.

I read a Sermon of Buckminster’s upon the character of Peter marked by the usual merits of his style. Matthew 26. 35. “Peter said unto him, though I should die with thee yet will I not deny thee.” Also Luke 22. 61.62. “And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly.” The point of the discourse seemed to be to raise a new evidence of the truth of the Christian Religion from the very denial of Peter. Ingenious but not so striking as the sketch of the man himself. Evening at home. Mr. Price Greenleaf came in and passed some time, as also Mr. Beale and his two daughters. The first Quincy visitors excepting the Lunts that we have had.