Cold and clear. Time divided as usual. Evening at home.

The account from Washington is that a Speaker has been at last chosen, Mr. Hunter of Virginia, a young man never spoken of at the commencement of the session. This has been done by the union of the Nullifying interest of Mr. Calhoun, dissatisfied with the hostility to them of Mr. Benton by which Mr. Pickens and Mr. Lewis were successively rejected as candidates for the situation, with the Whig party which threw it’s whole force with remarkable energy and precision. What the result of this movement may be, it is not possible to foretell, but the blow is a severe one against the Administration and may lead to it’s downfall. I do not know what to think of it in other respects, for Harrison is a poor creature as a leader enough.

At work at Office. Short walk. Oedipus Tyrannus which as usual furnishes me with my pleasantest reading. How much pleasanter than the excitement of political contest.

After dinner finished the articles upon medals in the first volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions as well as something of Pinkerton. My Wife was quite sick with a bad head ach all day so as to be obliged to go to bed, and I wrote all the evening upon my Lecture.