
          In your second letter you give me discouraging news about the Lyceum [the Lyceum of Natural History of New York City].
 I must confess I have long secretly feared that thing's [sic] were tending to a 
 crisis of this kind, though like the old Romans I would not allow myself
 to despair of the Republic. And I do not yet despair. If you can
 only keep alive long enough to pay our debt to the His. Soc. [probably the New-York Historical Society], which by the
 most rigid economy and the most persevering [?] of numbers, may
 yet be done, so as to come off with honour; and then keep together a 
 know of choice spirits as a nest egg, (rather a lovely comparison to be
 sure) it may yet one day become respectable.


 I have not heard of [Nec. Glicae?] in France. Mitchell's promised to
 send me a letter to him and I wrote to you to ask him for it, but anything
 is excusable in a man in love.  If you sent it I never received it. 


 I saw very little of the magnates of the self-styled Modern
 Athens. They were all in the country. "That scoundrel Jameson"
 returned to town before I left there, but he had made himself sick by
 climbing over the Scotch Mountains with a load of [stones?] upon his back,
 and I did not call on him. I made enquiries after your correspondent
 Stewart, and was told that the author of the [Hor. Cryp. Educ?] had died 
 some six months before while he was engaged in preparing for 
 the press a new edition of the works of his friend Prof. [Beoron? Bacon?]


 I was highly gratified with the College Museum at Edinburgh. They have
 built two superb apartments for it besides [?]. The Collection
 is by far the best in Great Britain, and indeed the only good one I [saw?].
 They have lately purchased a large collection of Birds from a French
 Naturalist which forms the principal value of the Cabinet.


 The scientific intelligence you give is interesting. If Schweinitz sent me
 anything take care of it for me if not too troublesome and when you write
        