A high degree of cold has recently been experienced.  The thermometer stood at 28 deg. below zero at one o’clock this morning.  It had risen to 18 deg. at day-break—­being the greatest observed degree of cold during the season.  It did not exceed 4 deg. above zero during any part of the day.

5th.  A year ago to-day, a literary friend wrote to me to join him in preparing a Gazetteer of the State of New York, to supplant Spafford’s.  Of the latter, he expresses himself in the letter, which is now before me, in unreserved terms of disapprobation.  “It is wholly unworthy,” he says, “of public patronage, and would not stand in the way of a good work of the kind; and such a one, I have the vanity to believe, our joint efforts could produce.  It would be a permanent work, with slight alterations, as the State might undergo changes.  My plan would be for you to travel over the State, and make a complete geological, mineralogical, and statistical survey of it, which would probably take you a year or more.  In the mean time, I would devote all my leisure to the collection and arrangement of such other materials as we should need in the compilation of the work.  I doubt not we could obtain the prompt assistance of the first men in the State, in furnishing all the information required.  Our State is rapidly increasing in wealth and population, and I am full in the faith that such a work would sell well in different parts of the country.”

6th.  I did nothing to-day, by which I mean that it was given up to visiting and talking.  It is Dr. Johnson, I think, who draws a distinction between “talk and conversation.”  It is necessary, however, to assign a portion of time in this way.  “A man that hath friends must show himself friendly,” is a Bible maxim.

7th.  The garrison library was this morning removed from my office, where it had been placed in my charge on the arrival of the troops in July, the state of preparations in the cantonment being now sufficiently advanced to admit its reception.  A party of gentlemen from the British garrison on Drummond Island came up on a visit, on snow shoes.  The distance is about 45 miles.

8th.  I commenced reading Holmes on “The Fulfilment of the Revelation of St. John,” a London work of 1819.  The author says “that his explanation of the symbols is founded upon one fixed and universal rule—­that the interpretation of a symbol is ever maintained; that the chronological succession of the seals, trumpets, and vials is strictly preserved; and that the history contained under them is a uniform and homogeneous history of the Roman empire, at once comprehensive and complete.”—­Attended a dining-party at Mr. Johnston’s.

9th.  Continued the reading of Holmes, who is an energetic writer, and appears to have looked closely into his subject.  The least pleasing trait in the work is a polemic spirit which is quite a clog to the inquiry, especially to those who, like myself, have never read the authors Faber, Cunningham, and Frere, whose interpretations he combats.  For a clergyman, he certainly handles them without gloves.