HOME LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE. 235 



The Academy has got a new house, much larger and better 

 than the old one ; and besides this, the government are to build 

 us a new library and museum, and to take the repairs of the 

 new house on themselves for the future, so that all our funds 

 now will go to scientific purposes. It was Lord Clarendon who 

 got us this boon. I was always ashamed when taking a stranger 

 up those shabby dark stairs at the Academy House, and gene- 

 rally took occasion apologetically to inform the visitor that the 

 Duke of Wellington was supposed to have been born there. I 

 wonder was he ! The Academy has had the house since 1787. 



To the Same. 



April 6, 1852. 

 I have begun my lectures. This year I am giving a course 

 on vegetable human food, and to day lectured on the potato. 

 I work at " Nereis " every day from ten till two — which gets me 

 on slowly. I write lectures three days, and idle three (as now, 

 scribbling this), and before breakfast I lay out plants for gluing. 

 Gray will have heard with regret that poor Charles Lemann 

 is lying in a hopeless state. He has offered his Herbarium (I am 



told), through B , to Mr. Lowell, but does not think it will be 



taken on the terms. Do you know that the very many deaths 

 of late years among our botanical friends, the breaking up of 

 their Herbaria and sale of their labours as soon as they are 

 buried, besides the rapidity with which their names pass away, 

 have struck me forcibly, so much so, that were I working for 

 myself, I should not be at the trouble of collecting and arranging, 

 &c. Here, at Trinity College, Dublin, I sit like a turnspit 

 roasting the meat, and when I am gone I suppose another dog 

 will be put in my place. The Herbarium will not be broken up. 

 I am content, for I seem to be working for some little purpose. 

 I should just like to leave it in better order — to get through the 

 arrears — and to return borrowed specimens. But I do not think 

 things in general are worth the pains they cost. My views of 

 personal fame are very different from what they were. I was 

 reading a letter to day in the newspaper at breakfast from 

 Mr. Hind, telling of the discovery of another new planet, and 

 regretting that some cloudy weather had prevented him from 

 seeing and finding it, and many more. Truly there be clouds 



