Henry D. Thoreau returns to Harvard College, rooming alone in Hollis Hall no. 23. He enrolls in the following classes:
- Natural Philosophy with weekly lectures on Astronomy taught by Joseph Lovering; reading An elementary treatise on astronomy by John Farrar
- Intellectual Philosophy taught by Francis Bowen; reading An essay concerning human understanding by John Locke
- German taught by Hermann Bokum
- Italian taught by Pietro Bachi
- English; bi-weekly themes with Edward T. Channing, forensics with Channing and Giles, and elocution with William H. Simmons and George F. Simmons
- Lectures on Rhetoric and Criticism with Edward T. Channing
Thoreau also checks out The history of the progress and termination of the Roman republic, volume 1 by Adam Ferguson, The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, translated into English blank verse by the late William Cowper, esq., volume 1, Library of American biography, volume 5 edited by Jared Sparks, and Lives of the Italian poets, volumes 1 and 3 by Henry Stebbing from the library of the Institute of 1770.
