First Visit to England. 135 



fresh and insipid. The American war was up. Morell 

 favoured the view of Mill, and recognized slavery as at the 

 bottom of the whole business. Wilkes stoutly denied it: 

 slavery had nothing to do with it ! He is a student of the 

 Times, and quoted all the proslavery action of the North, 

 with the recent demonstration of Lincoln to the black com- 

 mittee.* Morell gave me a copy of his Grammar, and Fitch 

 of his Arithmetic. It is now Friday morning. Morell, 

 Spencer, and Silsbee are to dine with us Sunday night at 

 seven. The Scientific Association meets at Cambridge, 

 October ist. Morell does not go. We shall go, though 

 whether we remain till the close is uncertain. . . . 



I went with Spencer at his request to see Tyndall re- 

 specting the republishing of his forthcoming book. He was 

 at the Royal Institution, where their researches are carried 

 on in a dingy hole don'fi cellar^ which Tyndall denominated 

 the "den." He is a single man of forty, with a scanty 

 strip of forehead, and big, straight, prominent nose — the 

 most restless, nervous creature I ever set eyes on. We 

 stayed but a few minutes, and nothing was said of anything 

 but the book and the publication of books. 



Saturday, Septembe?' 2jth. — Was in the Exhibition yester- 

 day,! ^"<^ never had such a realizing sense of the humbug 

 of art criticism. " Breadth, depth, simplicity, truthfulness " ; 

 "Truthfulness, simplicity, life, beauty — a splendid little 

 piece of Nature," etc., ad infinitum. 



We have nothing from home since September 2d, though 

 we watch daily and with extreme avidity. The war plot 

 thickens with you. Heaven only knows how the knot is to 

 be cut; but by the present outlook it must be soon. The 

 sympathy with the courage and spirit of the South is uni- 

 versal here. Our last newspapers are the nth September, 



* The news of the emancipation proclamation had not yet reached 

 England to confute Prof. Wilkes. 



f He was in the picture gallery in company with a couple of art critics. 



