The Whig Newspapers continue to be filled with gross personalities against my father and teem with misrepresentations of his conduct.1 I do not know precisely what in this case is best to be done. Is it worth while to notice them?

I went to the Office and was engaged in Accounts and in Diary but made very slight progress in the same. Walk. Home. Livy. Called at the Advocate Office but found nobody. My No. 4 to Mr. Slade was published this morning after such a long delay as to make it hardly worth reading. This is Mr. Halletts way, and there is no avoiding it. I have sent the last of my letters and this winds up. I propose now to let things take their course for the present.

Afternoon, I was obliged to go and act as one of a Committee to go and examine the Accounts, of the Treasurer of the Middlesex Canal. This is a business from which I thought I had been released, but in my absence yesterday from the Director’s meeting, they stuck me on again. Mr. Chadwick, Mr. Eddy and I were engaged thus all the afternoon.

Home. Evening, the time consumed in reading Mr. A. H. Everett’s 8th. of January Address—An eloquent piece of composition and on the whole well calculated although there is a suppleness of praise in it which I cannot very well applaud.2 Afterwards, Goethe.