Morning quite unusually cold for this season of the year. I went out but did not remain long at the Office as I wished first to go to the Athenaeum and afterwards to join my Wife in a visit to the Painting 272rooms of Messrs. Alexander and Harding. I procured at the first place two or three new books which I look over as a kind of amusement. Mr. Harding has been painting Mrs. T. B. Adams, a picture as good as any that he paints and which only makes one turn away from the vanity of all such matters. Mr. Alexander has been taking a picture of Edward Brooks’ little daughter which is tolerably pretty. But I think such things are rather foolish indulgences for features change and if the picture is not itself good, it becomes but so much wood and canvass.

Home to read Juvenal. Afternoon, amused myself part of the time in reading and part in copying some old MSS which are important to the reputation of my grandfather. He was one of the battered characters of the day. Evening Read to my Wife aloud from Dacre, a fashionable novel,1 until nine when we went to a party at Mr. Edward Miller’s. Company very mixed and not very entertaining to me. Home early.