Cold morning. At home writing. Evening at the Mansion.

This was a sharp morning and indeed continued quite cold throughout the day. I devoted myself pretty steadily to writing the articles I had proposed. In the course of the day I had finished two out of three of the papers and from a hasty resurvey of them I was better pleased than usual. But it is not possible to judge of articles of this kind without the intervention of time from the warmth of composition which I cannot well give. Luckily imperfection is the character of our press, so that I am only in good company when I make errors in style. I have not had occasion or rather have not allowed myself time to rewrite.

The men began to work over the field to prepare it for ploughing and I walked for a short time down to the Bank. This with the exception of our usual trip to the house below for the evening was all the exercise out of doors which I took. The only news of importance is that the Banks in New York did actually rub through Saturday and the departure of the Liverpool.