21st.--To the Brent by half-past nine: worked well till half-past one. Begins to look bravely, and beautiful colour; but still requires all my energy and attention to master the difficulties attending a style of work I have not been bred to. Weather very cold; north wind, which it is to be hoped will take off the cholera. After dinner to the corn-field for about three hours; interrupted by a shower, and somehow did very little. Altogether these little landscapes take up too much time to be profitable. This evening, wasted two hours with Emma trying to make out an error of sixpence in our accounts, in which I succeeded at last. I meant to have done so much to-night, and so have done nothing. I cannot help it, but somehow whatever I am about I must go through with to the extremity. This, if the work happens to be of importance, is a most happy quality; but on the other hand it is a most unprofitable mania when the occasion that calls it forth is trivial, as in the present case,--such as an error of sixpence, weeding a piece of garden, or such-like. The only thing I can never bring myself to do with care is writing. This has always (I know not wherefore) appeared to me as base and mechanical, and in some way I am sure to make it disgraceful. Either I spell it wrong, and this I can’t help and never could manage; or else I get a bad pen, and so blotch and scribble it that it is not readable; or else I get sleepy, and fill it up with iterations or faults of prosody,[86] which must make me appear like a most illiterate ass, which however I am not. Oh for Woolner’s[87] precision--rare in a man of art!... 24th.--Sunday.... Worked at the _Lady of Saturday night_ Cartoon, which White has promised to buy, but has not yet performed. Two pound and the pawnshop is all that now remains us. No debts, however, except about £14 in all to my tailor, my lawyer, and my frame-maker whose account is not sent in: so I do not owe above £8, and have one hundred a year still. This week I have worked steadily on neither Sunday, but forty-two hours in the week, which is seven hours per diem _pure work_ (for I only put down the time I actually work at art, not the time lost in preparatives). I am in reality employed at _business_ all my time, from the moment I get up till I go to bed; but I am dreamy, and slow in my movements.... 26th.--... To the Brent by ten, worked till one--finished the landscape part as much as I can do to it from nature. Went to see the river, as far as the Decoy-farm; found none of it so beautiful as I had painted. Home to lunch, after a splendid walk in a broiling sun. Afternoon, to the corn-field.... 27th.--... Up late. Worked at filling up the holes made over the parlour-window, from which I had knocked away three hideous grinning heads, that formed part of the house.