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March 24.
Mr. Molé used to say that in the Provincial Letters one saw “greatness within smallness.”
Milton does not call Adam “the most beautiful” but “the best of men.”
March 28.
The mind. It loves to produce flowers.
March 29.
And indeed, when we speak, we write in the air what we say.
History is of men; but what has been believed of it for so long and so universally comes from God. That is too great a prodigy.
One can advance for a long time in life without growing old in it.
April 1.
Beauty. Old age has its ruins; childhood offers its beginnings.
In mere masonry there is no idea; in architecture there is. There is conception by the soul... There is beauty united with utility. In mere masonry there is only utility. It houses man as a thing, as an animal, and not as an intelligence. It concerns itself with night and storms more than with day and serene weather.
But the bird’s nest, the beaver’s house? God had the idea of them, and he gave the animal the skill to make what he had thought.
— As in a song that has joy in it, there is always, for that alone, some beauty.
The human mind needs poetry, needs metaphysics; but if it has only bad ones, it is content with them.
April 2.
... and the delights of the earth. Others are needed...
April 7.
— an indecision of mind that makes the reader’s pleasure uncertain.