Morning cold and clear. I went to the Office and was able to effect something in the way of reading before dinner. I began Milton’s Defence of the People of England against Salmasius1—A curious specimen of the mode of supporting a controversy in those times. We have become more polite without changing at all the current of human feeling which does remain and must remain very bitter. Milton’s style is strong. He wrote in Latin and this though it gives us none of the 205idioms of language which characterize each species, yet is favorable to the energy of composition.

I walked an hour on the common with my child. The breeze was clear and bracing. My mother could not have a finer day to start.

Afternoon at work copying. Evening the same, excepting a little of Virgil. The Child keeps us so much awake nights that I have to make up my sleep in the day time.