Peter marks has been in my service for nearly five years—he is perfectly honest & good tempered, & an accomplished house servant. Understands also the care of horses & is a good driver—

Visited the London Docks—St. Katherine’s the London & the West India.—Gave me the best idea I have yet had of the immense trade & wealth of London. It is the heart of the civilized world & receives & propels the “vital fluid” which circulates through the whole body—And what a...

Yesterday, Christmas day, we went in the morning to the Church of the Foundlings where the music is good, the preaching “mediocre.” The services were long and the execrable creed of St. Athanasius formed a part. What an insult to God and Man the reciting of this blasphemous relic of barbarous...

Yesterday I passed an hour & a half at the National Gallery. I have been there repeatedly before but I am just now beginning to see clearly & understand understandingly. Hitherto my mind has been confused and my eyes dazzled by a multitude of objects which I am learning to separate &...

the last day of the month I do not know how it is that doing so little I have so little time to do any thing in. It is a problem I cannot solve. On Sunday, feeling somewhat feeble from my late indisposition, I went with Mrs Stevenson, by appointment, to call on Mrs Grote, wife of the radical...

Sunshine & showers—April weather in February. Have received letters from home—one from my dear Randolph. Sunday I accompanied Mrs Bates to the Cemetery on the Harrow road, called I believe Kensall Green. It is a pleasant morning drive from the West End, is well situated and commands a fine...

We dined yesterday with Mr Davis in Spanish Place with a set of old Indians. A yellow-faced General Somebody half deaf & half tipsy; A doctor, in shape and movement like a huge turtle; A Captain who seemed a cross between a Spaniel & a Donkey, fawning as the one, dull as the other. There...

Off the Banks of Newfoundland. Three weeks at sea. Dismal weeks of incessant sickness & suffering. Let no one talk of sea-sickness who has not felt it in it’s horrors—it’s weakness, it’s helplessness, it’s utter prostration of all power bodily and mental. O long days & weeks of giddiness ...

Faithful to my promise, dearest —, I shall spend an hour every Sunday in writing all my childish recollections of my dear grandfather, which are sufficiently distinct to relate to you. My memory seems crowded with them, and they have the vividness of realities; but all are trifles in themselves,...

I hope soon to have a breathing spell, in which to write to you—My victory will be such as never was seen before: no, not even at New Orleans.—Great as the confidence of my friends in my character may be, they even cannot form the remotest conception of the strength of my position. How it defies...

I write to you, dearest Jane, a little before the time; as the Steamer leaves England not before the first of next month and I usually allow not more than a week for my letter to reach Liverpool, but if I do not write now I may have to wait five or six weeks, as I am going to a place pretty much...