120 FIRST JOURNEY IN EUROPE. [1839, 



the museum in Java and India. He is an American, 

 if you can so call a man who has not been in the 

 country since the year 1800. I was much interested 

 with the library, which contains a vast quantity of 

 Indian idols, sctdptures, and antiquities, as well as 

 fine Chinese curiosities. It is immensely rich, also, in 

 Indian, Persian, and Arabic manuscripts ; the finest 

 in the world in such things. Some of the Persian 

 (Arabic) manuscripts are most beautifully illustrated, 

 or illuminated, and the writing is neater than you can 

 conceive. Here is preserved also an original petition 

 of the India Company to Oliver Cromwell, with the 

 answer in his own rough and strong handwriting.^ . . , 

 We dined at Lambert's, where we found Robert Brown, 

 Mr. Ward,^ who had been looking for me, and imme- 

 diately asked me to name a day to see his plants in 

 the Wardian eases, and an evening erelong to examine 

 some thirty or forty iirst-rate microscopes which he 

 has in his house ; also Dr. Bostock, Mr. Benson, a 

 legal gentleman, a great scholar and author ; and last, 

 not least, yet certainly almost the last person I should 

 have expected to see. Lady Charlotte Bury (formerly 

 Lady Charlotte Campbell), whom you will remember 

 as the author of that book on the secret history of 

 the court of George IV. and his Queen, of which we 

 read together, that summer, the deeply interesting re- 

 view by Brougham. Lady Bury is now supposed to 

 be sixty years old, and was for a long time considered 

 as the handsomest woman in Great Britain ; she still 



keeper of tlie museum of the East India Company. Brown & Bennett 

 published part of his collections, Plantce Javanicce Bariores. 



^ I forgot to mention also some bricks from Babylon, covered with 

 arrowhead characters, which were the most interesting relics of an- 

 tiquity I almost ever saw. — A. G. 



2 Nathaniel B. Ward, 1791-1868; inventor of the Wardian case. 



