Variable weather, with more or less of rain. My time taken up for more than six hours in steady writing private letters home. The accounts from America do not yet put us at ease. Vicksburg resists with great pertinacity, and the movement of the army in Virginia is still a riddle. The great and critical trouble with us is the end of the term of service of so large a portion of our forces. But for that I should hope to make a broad stride in the war this spring. Even the incapacity of our leaders would not prevent the national operation of the momentum of the stronger body against the less. On the whole, if I review the course of the past three mouths the result is that the rebels have been steadily losing. Their condition never improves. Let us trust that the sense of this will ultimately have its effect on their temper, which is not naturally pertinacious or enduring. I must say that I long for an end of this dreadful strife. A walk, and a quiet evening in the course of which, I read a little more of Kinglake’s strange account of the battle of the Alma. Certainly the English can find no fault with our Generals, whilst they furnish such poor models of their own.