I certainly would not have believed, six years ago, that I had so few friends who had any trust in me; or that the British public would have entirely declined to promote such an object as the purchase of land for national freehold. Next year I shall urge the operatives whom any words of mine may reach, to begin some organization with a view to this object among themselves. They have already combined to build co-operative mills; they would find common land a more secure investment. I am very anxious to support, with a view to the determination of a standard of material in dress, the wool manufacture among the old-fashioned cottagers of the Isle of Man; and I shall be especially grateful to any readers of Fors who will communicate with Mr. Egbert Rydings (Laxey, Isle of Man,) on this subject. In the island itself Mr. Rydings tells me, the stuffs are now little worn by the better classes, because they ‘wear too long,’—a fault which I hope there may be yet found English housewives who will forgive. At all events, I mean the square yard of Laxey homespun of a given weight, to be one of the standards of value in St George’s currency. The cheque of £25, sent to Mr. Rydings for the encouragement of some of the older and feebler workers, is the only expenditure, beyond those for fittings slowly proceeded with in our museum at Sheffield, to which I shall have to call attention at the year’s end. II. Affairs of the Master. Though my readers, by this time, will scarcely be disposed to believe it, I really can keep accounts, if I set myself to do so: and even greatly enjoy keeping them, when I do them the first thing after my Exodus or Plato every morning; and keep them to the uttermost farthing. I have examples of such in past diaries; one, in particular, great in its exhibition of the prices of jargonel and Queen Louise pears at Abbeville. And my days always go best when they are thus begun, as far as pleasant feeling and general prosperity of work are concerned. But there is a great deal of work, and especially such as I am now set on, which does not admit of accounts in the morning; but imperatively requires the fastening down forthwith of what first comes into one’s mind after waking. Then the accounts get put off; tangle their thread—(so the Fates always instantly then ordain)—in some eightpenny matter, and without Œdipus to help on the right hand and Ariadne on the left, there’s no bringing them right again. With due invocation to both, I think I have got my own accounts, for the past year, stated clearly below.