Clear and cold east wind. At home in study all day. My mother and the rest of the family took tea and passed the evening. Some time lost in the morning from an immethodical examination of MS letters at the old house, so discouraging I hardly know where to begin with them.

Read Lessing’s Laocoon 104–172. Some books weaken the effect they first produce as we go along. This seems the case here Lessing is an acute critic and often right, but not in those cases most clearly which he labours the most. Lucretius in review. Book 1. l 185–450, much more distinct in this reading. Bayle’s Letters. Vol. 2, p. 456–508, numbered as one volume.