In the morning Mr Mason called on me again; I gave him 2/6 for his journey of coming. And whenever he has a farm to measure and map, or if we can get one, he will then instruct us. If it is a farm that he has to measure, then we are to give him 10/6 per week each, but if we can get one, then he is to instruct us gratis; that is, for only the expenses of measuring the said land.
We dined on the remains of Sunday and yesterday’s dinners. Mr Stone paid my wife another visit today. This day a match of cricket was played on our common between this parish and Waldron; our parish were victors, they having 8 wickets to go down. At home all day. In the afternoon at work in my garden. In the evening read the 12th and last book of Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I have now read twice through and in any opinion it exceeds anything I ever read for sublimity of language and beauty of similes. And I think the depravity of human nature entailed upon us by our first parent is finely drawn.