The cold continues notwithstanding the rapid advance of the season. I went to the Office and passed my time much as usual. Accounts and Diary. Attempted to write a letter to my Mother but did not succeed very well so that I concluded to postpone it to a better opportunity. Walk, in which I persevered, then home to read Livy. Afternoon, I wrote my letter,1 and began the examination of another bundle of old papers.

I made a change in the arrangement of my books so that I was able to see what had already been done which looks quite formidable. I think, was the same to be done over, I should have altered and improved the arrangement. But this is met by the reflection that if it had not been done as it is, it might not have been done at all.

Read Bolingbroke’s Life which is interesting, and part of Niebuhr’s first Volume of Rome which is not so. German in the evening, de la Motte Fouque’s Magic ring—Slidell’s American in England to my Wife.2