'What I deplore is that laziness and dissipation of mind to which I am still subject. At present I am quieting my conscience with the thought that I shall study very diligently this winter. Heaven grant it be so! for without increasing in knowledge what profits it to live? Yet the commencement has been inauspicious. Three weeks ago I began to read Wallace's "Fluxions" in the Encyclopaedia, and had proceeded a little way, when the "Quarterly Review", some problems in a very silly Literary and Statistical Magazine of which the the schoolmasters are supporters, Madm de Sta?l's "Germany", etc. etc., have suspended my operations these ten days. After all I am afraid that this winter will pass as others have done before it - unmarked by improvement; and what is to hinder the next, & its followers till the end of the short season allotted me to do so likewise?'