Weather clear and warm. Morning spent in personal superintendence upon some improvement I wished in the road. Afternoon in reading. Evening at the Mansion where the family dined.

The necessity of personal direction prevented my attending to much study. A few pages of Locke 282–300 and Lucretius l. 800–915 comprised all of my reading. The days have now become so materially shorter that my afternoons cease to be profitable, and the evening is given to the family.

I perceive in the Morning Post of today an article which I presume to be from T. K. Davis, raising up Mr. Calhoun as the great man of the Country.1 Davis is not yet fledged as a politician and appears to me consequently to run into error by taking shadows for substance. But he takes a fair start and if things undergo a change as now appears likely he will gain credit for it. I wish I could have taken the same, but the thing was utterly impossible. The junction2 of Mr. Calhoun the very thing which fixes him entirely drove me off.