Cold and quite clear for this meridian. I expected to improve my time a good deal today, but for some reason or other I barely made out to finish a letter addressed to a consul. The composition is by no means the retarding portion of this work. It requires a constant examination of the laws and the customs which consumes much time. I was also much interested in reading portions of the diplomatic correspondence of last year published by the government. They enlighten me in many particulars in which I was much puzzled. I do not think the British positions improved by the exposition, though it may be that the errors come from a prompting on the other side of the channel. I went with Mrs Adams and my son Henry to the private show of the pictures of English artists at the British Institution I received the same impression that I recorded on my visit to the exhibition of the Royal Academy last summer. Much mechanical skill but a similarity and common place conception, with no marked rendering. The best specimens so far as I can judge were those of a jury, of a spanish interior, and of a “a quiet dell.” The rooms were full and it was cold, so we hurried home. Left cards at Lord Stanley’s, of Alderley, and went in to see M Van de Wryer. We talked only in general of the tone of the speeches in Parliament, of the Queen’s condition &c. He says there will be no court for a year, which is not unwelcome. For by that time my position I trust will be definitively settled. Evening, Lord Malmesbury, and the days of the Addington Ministry. The secret history is interesting.