^T. 76.] TO . 803 



giving our time there to the new well-contrived Pitt- 

 Kiver Museum of Ethnology; then walked to 

 Acland's and made a long call on his daughter, 

 who seemed pleased, and we certainly were to see her 

 again, and looking well, though a sufferer and invalid. 

 The dinner at Balfour's, J. will describe. 



Friday, at ten o'clock, the Hookers called with a 

 carriage, and we drove to Nuneham, seven miles, where 

 Colonel Harcourt, older brother of Sir William Har- 

 court, had invited us to see the place and lunch. It is 

 one of the principal seats of the Harcourt family, — 

 not the oldest, which is on the Thames much higher 

 up — and is in view from the railway to London, a 

 handsome but externally rather plain pile, and so full 

 of remarkable things. As soon as we arrived we were 

 shown through most of the house by Colonel H., and 

 some of the historical \curiosities were brought out. . . . 

 There is an unparalleled gallery of original portraits 

 of British poets, mostly given by themselves, almost 

 all of them. ... 



The " omnibus " had been ordered, and we drove 

 through the park, into the arboretum, and through it 

 by winding roads were landed at the conservatory 

 and gardens, the dairy, the ornamental grounds, 

 filled with statues, etc., inscriptions in verse and prose 

 set up by the wits of the times of George H. and HI. In 

 the house we were shown some of the letters, of which 

 there is a vast quantity, now being sorted and arranged 

 in volumes and indexed. One volume is of those of 

 George III., beginning with those when a small boy, 

 and badly spelled, ending with some when an old man 

 and insane. Then a walk along the terrace and the 

 side commanding the fine views, from some points 

 Oxford dimly seen in the distance ; then the lunch. 



