_10th._—I was with him again yesterday, and through such a day of rain that I hope I shall not take cold. He was just the same, mentioned Casburn’s account of the Blue Coat Hospital, and being washed four times a day; talked of the water gods, smiled, and joked. I could not endure the moment passing without another attempt to turn his mind to more serious impressions. I asked C. if he had had any prayers said to and for him. No, he had not mentioned it, but two nights before he had prayed shortly for himself. I told him that there ought to be prayers in the room, and that C. could read them. He said, ‘_Yes, he could_,’ and for the family also! It made no impression, and soon after closing his eyes as if for sleep, said, ‘Your servant, I only keep you,’ so I left him. I have fears that it is a sort of judicial blindness and insensibility of his state to have his senses and make no better use of them, I am much shocked. _11th._—Yesterday there again, but he was getting up to have his bed made, and White, the physician, thought I had better not go up. _January 10, 1806._—Peggy Metcalfe lent me ‘Marie Menzikoff’ as a true history, and I, like a fool, read much of it, after finding it a mere romance. I have not looked at anything of the novel kind for many years, but this French thing seized my attention and hurried me on. I wish she had been further before putting it in my hands. It has unhinged me, and broken my attention to better things, which shows strongly how pernicious this sort of reading is, and what a powerful temptation to vice such productions are sure to prove. Oh! the number of miserables that novels have sent to perdition! _16th._—I have been looking over Dr. Johnson’s ‘Prayers and Meditations,’ and, upon the whole, the feeling they have impressed is that of pity; he seemed by one passage to think his complaints nearly allied to madness, and often speaks of his morbid melancholy; his sloth seems to have been dreadful. What a contrast to the life of John Wesley!