interest in politics, etc.  In great measure, however, it is the fault of the biographer, who has shown us the man at a distance, on stilts, or at best only in his most outward circumstances, never letting us know, as Carlyle says, what sort of stockings he wore, and what he ate for dinner.  I don’t think Sir James himself has much inwardness to him, but certainly his son has shown us only the outermost shell.  Have read the Iliad and Schleiermacher to-day. Aug. 24th.—­A queer circumstance happened this evening.  Col.  Kinsman and Mr. C. S. Davies called.  I was considering what unusual occurrence could have brought Mr. D. here, when he increased my wonder still more by disclosing his errand.  He had received, he said, a letter from Prof.  Woods, requesting that I, or a “lady whose taste was as correct in dress as in literature,” would decide upon the fashion of a gown to be worn by him at his inauguration as President of Bowdoin College, and forthwith procure such a gown to be made. Aug. 25th.—­I have been reading the second volume of Mackintosh, which is much better than the first, and gives a higher opinion of him.  He is certainly well described by Coleridge as the “king of men of talent.”  It is curious, by the way, to compare what M. says of C.:  “It is impossible to give a stronger example of a man, whose talents are beneath his understanding, and who trusts to his ingenuity to atone for his ignorance....  Shakespeare and Burke are, if I may venture on the expression, above talent; but Coleridge is not!” Ah, well—­de gustibus, etc.

I have been as busy as a bee all day; wrote notes, prepared for leaving home, read Schleiermacher, and Philip von Artevelde, which delighted me; walked after tea with Lizzy, then examined my papers to see what is to be burned.  I wish I knew what I was made for—­I mean, in particular—­what I can do, and what I ought to do.  I can not bear to live a life of literary self-indulgence, which is no better than another self-indulgence.  I do want to be of some use in the world, but I am infinitely perplexed as to the how and the what. Aug. 26th.—­Hurried through the last 200 pages of Mackintosh today.  On the whole, there is much to like as well as to admire in him.  One thing puzzles me in his case as in others:  How men who give no signs through a long life of anything more than the most cold and distant respect for religion—­the most unfrequent and uninterested remembrance, if any at all—­of the Saviour, all at once become so devout—­I mean it not disrespectfully—­on their death-beds.  What strange doubts this and other like mysteries suggest!

After tea I carried a bouquet to Mrs. French.  Saw all the way a sky so magnificent that words can do no justice to it—­splendors piled on splendors, till my soul was fairly sick with admiration.  Mrs. French asked me if life ever looked sad and wearisome to me. Ever!