The Alvan Stewart Papers

Introduction Biographical Sketch The Diary Sample Pages Bibliography

May 16 - June 10, 1831 Across the Atlantic, New York to Liverpool	June 11 - June 18, 1831 Landing in Liverpool; Travel to London	June 19 - June 26, 1831 London	June 27 - June 30, 1831 From London to Paris
July 1 - July 8, 1831 Paris	July 9 - July 14, 1831 Paris	July 15 - July 21, 1831 From Paris to Havre	July 22 - September 1, 1831 Return across the Atlantic, Havre to New York

London, June 19 - June 26, 1831

June 19th Sabbath-day, London. Last night on our arrival not liking the appearance of the Saracen's Head, we took lodgings at the Queen's Arms. - I had been so much deprived of my rest that I slept soundly until 1/2 after 8 o'clock this morning, I then arose, shaved, changed, washed up and walked around the largest Protestant church in the World, St. Paul's. - I then went took coffee, eggs, bread and butter, and then went into St. Paul's church the awful magnificence of which no description of which I am possessed can convey the idea by which it impressed my mind.

Here the artist has exhausted the power of architectural grandeur. - Here are the highest efforts of the chisel, which meet your eye every instant in the niches and on the sides of this temple commemorating the dying scenes of British warriors expiring in the defence of their country. There are poets and philosophers, and, at this moment of first impression, as I was gazing on the all but speaking marble, my eye fell upon the form of Samuel Johnson, the man of all others whose writings have most delighted me; at that very instant, the organ struck some of its grandest and heaviest notes; it was a moment of holy enthusiasm, as purely intellectual and almost divine in its character. - I was perfectly overcome by the association of ideas which came rushing over my mind at the sight of Johnson's marble, and that deep-toned organ whose heavy and mellow notes rolled in echoes through the vast chambers and lofty domes of St. Paul's.

In a few minutes more we advanced to the door of a little corner of the temple, where the service of the Church of England was performing with all of its mechanical devotion, and officer, venerable in appearance, with a shining staff, with a furbelowed robe, unlocked a small door by which we found ourselves on going up a small flight of stairs, seated in a sort of gallery by which we could overlook this pageantry of devotion. - It was difficult to hear; two persons appeared in the pulpit, like clergyman, who read together the service, and the organ took part in the responses. - After hearing an uncommon share of music, which was very fine, two persons, whom I took to be wardens with their long flowing robes and brazen staves, conducted a very venerable old man to the west end of the room clothed with his canonicals, whom I took to be the Vicar or Dean of St. Paul's, who read in a very loud voice the concluding portion of the morning service; in the very last part he was assisted by the two clergymen before mentioned, at the conclusion, he was conducted in great state through the center aisle to the peace from whence he came; when a young man whom I had not noticed before ascended the pulpit and preached a sermon on Moderation, which appeared to be a political discourse; and was pointed against any encroachments on the privileges of the established Clergy, in the contemplated reformation by Parliament in cutting down those overgrown establishments, now in the hands of the highest eclesiastical dignitaries. - Poor young man, he is endeavoring to buffet a torrent which must overwhelm all opposition. - After the service was ended I discovered there were ten times as many persons present at this mere nook or corner of St. Paul's as I had supposed, when they came out of this apartment and began to wander over the vast area and stare at the groups of statuary. - From which wandering and gazing in about five minutes, we were driven by the officers of the church and we found ourselves in Cheapside street.

One fact has struck me in particular that the people of London appear exactly in dress and appearance like the citizens of the City of New York and the villages of the state of New York. - The truth is London gives fashion to New York, and she to the villages, but it is not only dress, but even physiognomy is the same, and so it is with the upper classes of Liverpool, Chester and other places. - The English which are most common in America are the laboring English who come from the agricultural districts, where the manners, dress, and speech are not changed from generation to generation, and they appear as their ancestors did one hundred and fifty years ago. - But the man of London is the man of New York, Utica, Rochester and Buffalo, and the same holds of the woman of London. - Every street full of people one meets in London confirms this position.

June 20th St. Martin's Le Grand Newgate near St. Paul's, and Ludgate Hill.

This morning I bought a history of the City of London with 108 drawings and various maps. Dr. Nelson and myself took up our line of march from the London-Coffee house through Ludgate-Hill, and came to Temple bar, the only gate left for form's sake in the City, passed through the strand and went into Parliament street, saw Somerset House and went by White Hall where the Regicides murdered Charles the first, went into St. James' Park, and saw review of his Majesty's foot guards, from thence visited the house of Lords, and the house of Commons in St. Stephen's Chapel. Neither of which rooms would contain over 7 or 800 - possibly 1000 persons. - Little contemptible rooms - mean abodes for the legislation of the Imperial Parliament. The house of Commons when well filled by its own members cannot all find seats below, but have to repair to the galleries. - There is a little place in the gallery behind the clock for spectators who pay half a crown a piece to look, which may hold from 50 to 100 - I sat down on the Scarlet Woolsack in the House of Lords the seat for the twelve judges. The Chancellor's Woolsack was sent to be repaired for tomorrow. - As the King comes to open Parliament with his speech we saw the door the King comes in at on such occasions, and a large chair with a downy scarlet cushion stuffed is prepared for the King - paid a shilling sterling for each of these sights. - Then viewed what is properly Westminster Hall in which the King is crowned, and dines on great days. - I then visited the Court of Common Pleas and found Lord Chief Justice Lindal of the Common Pleas trying a case of forgery, with a jury of twelve men, thirty or forty lawyers, barristers and sergeants were present on the three rows of benches, wigged and gowned. - The room is so small, that Cattaraugus County or Richmond County in the State of New York would think it necessary to pull down and build immediately their Court, houses were their rooms no larger. - I then went into the King's Bench and saw Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Lord Tenterden trying cases with a jury, about 20 or 30 limbs of the law were present. - The room from which so many decisions have flowed instructing the world what the Common law is, that room called the King's Bench is small and mean and not the size of one half of the Court room of Otsego County. - I saw Westminster Abbey a splendid pile; and the labor expended in its erection, and the nice taste and elegant carving of the 12th century exceeds all belief to one who has not seen it. - I wandered home after seeing many other beautiful things and visited Westminster Bridge on the way. - Intending to take another day for Westminster Abbey. - I elbowed my way home through the dense masses of living beings, and fatigued, sunk to sleep.

This afternoon, I found by accident, the Consul general's office of the United States, kept by Col. Aspinwall in Bishopgate without, and also found the office of Mr. Barring at No. 10 at Bishopgate street within, to both of which gentlemen I have letters of introduction, but they were neither of them at home.

I then visited the Tower, the abode of prisoners of State in former times, in which Ann Boleyn of innocent memory was confined, and saw the bloody gate over which in a room the two young princes were strangled, whose bones and ashes have since been removed to the vaults of Westminster Abbey - 200,000 stands of arms are here and all munitions of war. I saw a tombstone in the church apartment to the Tower, in which it is stated one John Tudor sleeps below after having lived 107 years. - There is a prodigious ditch surrounding the Tower, the bottom of which is covered with mud, when the tide flows out from under the Tower walls into the Thames, with which it communicates. The Tower has withstood the shocks of time from the days of William the Conqueror, by whom it was mostly built to overawe his rebellious subjects.

The rich jewels for the coronation of England's Kings and the bloody axe which severed the beautiful neck of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Earl of Stafford I did not see as it was too late to open them.

The Tower is regarded with its double gates to be impregnable. I saw this afternoon the East India's houses, which are truly great Palaces, in which the fate of 100 millions of East Indian's is considered and disposed of by English nabobs, whose only contemplation is how their monopoly may be secured on the renewal of their charter, and what may be the most advantageous means to be employed to extract the greatest quantity of money from their subjects on the sultry plains of India.

June 21st London. This has been a great day in England, the King in person has met Parliament at its opening and made an address from the Throne. - In order to see King William the 4th I walked through Ludgate Hill, the Strand and Parliament street and found myself at 10 A.M. at Westminster Abbey, a few rods from the House of Lords, where I concluded to spend two hours before the grand Pageant commenced. - I went in at the Poet's corner of this most justly renowned palace of the dead. - Here the Kings of England, the great dignitaries of the Church, great captains and warriors, the victorious Admirals, and chivalrous nobles, the mathematicians, astronomers and poets, who have filled the world with their actions of renoun and deeds of noble daring, which shall brighten the best pages of history with their acts to the World's end; lie in a sort of sepulchral pomp as so many testimonies of the vanity and brevity of human life.

I could not but compare the vanity and pomp of chariots blazing with escutcheons and heraldic geneaology, and the titles of their proprietors, with coats of arms, the proud servants of these proud men, covered with gold laced coats and cocked hats, silk stockings, all the pomp of the Horse Guards shining in silver breastplates and helmets, the yeomen of the guard clad in purple spangled with gold, bells ringing and canons roaring, and all the circumstance and pomp of a little hour on this World's stage; but William the 4th, Earl Grey, Lord Brougham must go into Westminster Abbey no more to go out, no longer, the loud the long continued cheers and hurrahs of human approbation arising from the armies of their fellow beings, but the cheering and the cheered will in a few days be swallowed up in the ocean time. - For I found in the poet's corner the prince of poets, Builelmus Shakespeare as it is written, with an inscription over his marble sculpture in Latin importing that the love his county bore him had erected this monument, and then comes the epitaph which his country could not write except by quoting lines from the great dead - which are these words in the Tempest -

"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
"The solem temples, the great globe itself,
"Yea all which it inhabits shall dissolve,
"And like the baseless fabric of a vision,
"Leave not a wreck behind."

Rare Ben Johnson, Milton, Butler, the father of Hudibras, Gay, Dryden, Pope, Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson Garrick, with many others seem to inhabit a little nook or coterie of the Abbey, as if conscious of their post mortem reputation, they having been in their lives do not wish to mingle their dust with the men who turned the world upside down, and gain their claim to be remembered in proportion to the widows they made, the orphans they created, and the towns they sacked.

Counts and Countesses, Dukes and Duchesses, sirs and ladies, knights and kings meet you in different apartments cut out of the solid marble, lying full length side by side, clothed in the drapery of death, immediately above where their bones were deposited, representing the last scene of being laid out in stable, after death, as if they were yet determined in this sort of dreadful form to force themselves upon the attention of posterity and claim some of the adulation bestowed on them by their cotemporaries. - But alas, how little courtesy is paid to these emblematical relics will appear when we learn that in the time of Cromwell one of these sarcophagic Kings having some silver connecting the head of stone to the body of stone, the head was stolen away leaving the decapitated trunk to prove that sculptured King's heads were liable to be removed in Cromwell's reign as the living one of Charles the First.

Wolfe's dying scene at Quebec is one of the grandest specimens of the chisel. The colony of Massachusetts erected a fine monument to the memory of Lord Howe, who fell at Ticonderoga in the French War. There is one to Major Andre, which truly states that his death was lamented by his enemies. Mary, Queen of Scots, always excites pity even in sculpture. There are a number of persons, among which Elizabeth, King William, and Mary, and Charles the second, who stand in full costume, as they did while living with the same clothing and jewels painted as wax figures. All of the four Georges sleep under the center of the Abbey beneath the floor.

There is one grand shipwreck cut in marble in which a person commemorated, lost his life; but to see the waves running over the ship as high as the round top and the bow of the ship under and sinking is a master performance on marble. Hundreds of other cases interesting in their character might be mentioned who inhabit this palace for the dead. For Westminster Abbey is truly a palace in its lofty dimensions. - It exceeds everything I have ever seen for the labor of the work bestowed on it in the fine art work, and I have no question that when one blow was struck on St. Paul's ten must have been struck on Westminster Abbey, not that it is larger but the everlasting fine work on the latter is what astonishes the beholder. - He is ready to say it would take a kingdom of artists for a century.

I paid two shillings sterling for a history of the Abbey, and broke out of this mausoleum of death among the thousands and tens of thousands of human beings which were rushing through Parliament Street from St. James' Park, who already lined the avenues, covered the terraces and filled the windows and doors through the four stories and finally covered the tops of the houses awaiting the approach of their sovereign. - Not liking to be overwhelmed by this dreadful mob I elbowed through them to the nearest house to the grand arch of the House of Lords, where the King's chariot would stop, and bargained with a woman for two shillings sterling for the right of standing on the roof of her house, on the fourth story or rather the flat lead covering of the fourth story. - I stood here about 1 1/2 hours and saw the arrival of the coaches of the nobility, their footmen covered with three cornered cocked hats, red, green and yellow military coats of the old school covered with gold lace silk stockings, shoes with buckles. - Bishops and Archbishops drove up, at length branches of the Royal family appeared. - Then the Queen, with her six greys with very splendid harness and carriage, which we took for the King's; next came the heir apparent, then we heard a shout which rent the Heavens by the countless multitude while the cannons were roaring and the bells of Westminster Abbey were striking their merry peals, and in a moment eight splendid cream colored horses, almost completely covered with gold plated harness with blue silk ribbons six inches wide for reins with many other ornaments about the heads of the horses I am unable to describe. - The carriage looked outside as though it was entirely gold somewhat in the shape of a square crown, the Lion and Unicorn, an image with darts are a part of the carriage as large as life. - In truth it was the most splendid thing ever seen. - The spokes looked like burnished gold. - All gold everywhere except the tire which was iron. - The door was opened to the carriage, a young gentleman got out, then white-headed red-faced King William the fourth, a good looking old gentleman; whom I saw, then another young person got out, and the King passed out of sight into the house. - The carriage turned around - I then left the top of the house and went into the mob, near the carriage. - While there, Captain Fitzclarence, one of the King's sons, rode up on horse back, dismounted and went into the house, while a servant who rode another horse held the captain's. During the time the foot and horse guards were assembled in front of the countless multitude, the wife of a captain of the horse guards mounted a fine charger and rode the whole length of the procession backwards and forwards as though she had been an adjutant parading a regiment.

I found the mob so great when I came below that the only escape I could make was through a back way to the Thames where an old waterman conducted me to the water's edge and rowed me under Westminster Bridge where people were mending the foundations of one of the abutments forty feet under water by the means of a diving bell. - I was rowed a little above Whitehall and landed - I ought to mention that Chancellor Brougham was cheered as well as the King on his arrival.

In the evening I visited Holborn and Heigh Holborn streets, saw New gate and the Fleet prisons, visited the west end of the town, Regent street, and many squares where the fashionable live - returned home with worn out feet, tired limbs and an exhausted frame, wrote some, read a chapter, went to bed and quickly sunk to sleep.

Wednesday, June 22nd 1831. Eat a seven penny breakfast, consisting of two boiled eggs, a buttered hot roll and a cup of coffee. - I visited this morning the great bankers of London, Baring & Brothers, at No. 10 in Bishopgate street, within, and found my letter of credit drawn on them by Prime Ward & King to be right and drew L20, of my L500, and was treated with great politeness.

I then went through Shore Ditch, in which I am Shore, the mistress of one of the Henry's, died, and through Hounds ditch. Visited the Mission house, the Bank of England, Stock Exchange, the Royal Exchange. - In the Bank of England I saw them shovelling specie with a sort of scoop shovel, and gold lying about by half-bushels. - The Bank of England with its thousands of offices receives and disburses the revenue of the Kingdom, and pays all pensions, annuities and interest on the different kinds of stock constituting the L950 million debt. It has two regiments of clerks. - In the center of the Bank is a grass plot of fifty or sixty square feet with two large trees growing. The Bank covers three or four acres of London, I should think, it is the largest building in the World on the ground.

I then went to the Stock Exchange, where the great money brokers of the World congregate to buy and sell the different stocks of the World. - The Emperor of the stock-jobbing world are Rothschild & Brothers, and the heir apparent to that exalted honor is Baring & Brothers. - Rothschild is sick and was not on change - I then went to the Royal Exchange, an immense building with a hollow square and gravel walk of a 100 feet square in the center of the building, and in niches, facing in, you see cut in marble the different inhabitants of the several countries on the globe in their costume, where you go under that part of the projection of the wall, where these images stand, where you will find persons ready to drive a bargain with you in relation to anything in the shape of good and chattels, which relate to that part of the world, under whose sign they stand.

Samuel Williams, the great American Banker, who failed and was succeeded by Mr. Wiggins, as a gentleman informed me, used to occupy the stand appropriated to the United States.

Early every morning in London and so on til 10 or 11 o'clock, I hear different bells tolling the knell of final departure to some person who belonged to the parish where the bell tolls.

Considerable excitement begins to prevail on the subject of the Indian Cholera Morbus reaching London, where it is expected by every arrival from the continent in the shape of infection or contagion. It has become the subject of much newspaper discussion, and the government have taken it up and sent Physicians to Europe to investigate its nature and the best mode of treatment, and have ordered a rigid quarantine towards persons and goods coming from infected districts on the continent. - As far as I can judge of public opinion there is a strong and steadfast resolution on the part of the people to annihilate the aristocracy and overgrown clergy in England, unless the House of Lords yields its assent to the Bill for the reformation of abuses in the abolition of rotten boroughs, and by adding half a million of new voters agreeably to the wish of the People and the King.

I should think, from what I have seen, that there was too much virtue, intelligence and money among the commoners of to submit to a proud, hereditary House of Lords much longer.

Today I saw the new and elegant Bridge, building over the Thames, I crossed the old London bridge, which has a kind of resting arbors of stone at short distances on each side the whole length, where the weary person may sit down and be protected from rain or sun.

This Bridge is 5 or 600 years old paved with common stone like a city pavement. - This afternoon as I was going to St. James Park in passing St. Clement's church, I saw a member stand around and letting a coffin into the ground, and in a minute more I saw two other coffins coming out of the church and inquired the cause of such extraordinary mortality in the parish, and found the two last coffins to be a young man and his wife both lately drowned in the Thames, and but few months married, and each an only child of their parents, who were dead also, and the two chief mourners were two good looking young men who were in the same boat which upset, and escaped after being an hour and a half in the water. I walked around St. James Park which has no more than 100 acres of pleasure grounds, a large pond of water in the center is made by a spring, which supplies the artificial pond. Trees, grass plots and gravel walks make up the Park. - At the west end is Buckingham House, on which his late Majesty George 4th spent a million of more for a palace and left it unfinished, the present King hates it and refuses to finish it. - I went through King William's Palace which lies at the Northwest corner of the Park; there are a number of old decayed brick buildings together with Court yards, these constitute the palace - a few civil soldiers are on guard among these courts, who are very civil to strangers which show the King's desire to please mankind.

Earl's and Duke's houses join the King's - Carleton House has been demolished and a row of palaces erected where it stood, inhabited by nobility. - From the Park I hastened to the House of Commons and paid an entrance fee of half a crown to obtain admission to the gallery of St. Stephen's Chapel which I found pretty well filled. - I heard five or six rather indifferent speeches from members during the sitting; the members wear their hats and are rather noisy, hallooing "hear" and cheering, a vile practice, sometimes hissing. - I staid till the house adjourned and then strayed home about two miles through one of those streets in which there is a mass of living beings, rushing in opposite direction with all the order of pursuit and expectation of enjoyment.

Thursday June 23rd. We hired a cabriolet, and went this forenoon to visit the American Secretary of legation, Washing Irving Esq. Author - His brother received us with courtesy and No. 8 Argyle Street, in a few moments Mr. Irving, the Secretary of Legation, came in, he is a polite, fine looking and of youthful appearance. - I could hardly believe that an author of near 30 years standing could look so young. - We got our passports made out for the French Minister, Mr. Irving says that the English Government show great politeness and conciliation in every official interchange, between them and us, and that Mr. McLean, our Minister, who returned for home last sabbath, made himself very agreeable and popular with the English Government and people, and his departure was regretted as a void, which a few will have the good fortune to supply. -

We carried our passports to the passport office of the French Minister, where they are to remain for consideration until 11 A.M. of Saturday morning, his office is C1 Charlotte Street, Cortland square. -

We took a coach and came home through Drury Lane by the Theater, and have been so fatigued that I have not ventured out since 12 o'clock except to get my dinner. - 10 at night, I will read my chapter and commit my body to repose.

June 24th London. This has been to me a busy and interesting day. - At 10 A.M. I took a cabriolet, and went to the British Museum, which certainly for the vastness of the buildings, and the infinite variety of matter contained in it exceeds all belief. - As a matter of favor we were first permitted, after registering my name in an album, to see a library of three hundred thousand volumes collected by George the 3rd in sixty years and presented by George the 4th to the Museum. - It is in a room 400 feet long, thirty feet high on each side from the floor to the top of the Room. It was truly immense.

All sorts of beasts, birds, snakes, flies, worms are preserved from the great Polar sorrel colored Bear, weighing 1500 weight to the smallest insect, paintings, sculpture, minerals of every description. - All the curiosities of Herculaneum, Pompeii. - The Elgin Marbles, all the large statuary of antiquity, and the finest faces cut in marble, in emerald, in glass and flint, not larger than a shilling, all the curiosities of Egypt. - The utensils and door knockers and every sort of implement of Ancient Rome and Greece, and many from Babylon; the ancient burnt brick of Babylon and inscriptions in Chaldaic, and East India, and Egyptian marbles of 7 or 8 tons weight carved out of solid rocks, being huge Idols. - In a word the visitor of the British Museum is let into the secrets of the old world as it was two or three thousand years ago; Sarcophagi, baths, mummies, various comic scenes are represented in marble and the very signs of their lavems are preserved.

But why do I begin to state what I saw as the longest life could not describe separately with any sort of justice, what I saw this day in the British Museum. - There is one large room full of ancient manuscripts, painters, designers, students, historians and compilers were found at every part of this magazine of knowledge, drawing from this immense ocean, something which suited his particular purpose.

I next went through Oxford Street into Bond Street, which Dr. Johnson some seventy years ago called "the lounge of fashion", which is so in some degree yet, though now it is eclipsed by St. James Street, Regent Street and Pall Mall. - I seated myself on a bench by the side of Bond Street and looked on the gay passers by, in coaches and liveries, and side walkers, and did no in one quarter of an hour see probably one person who was alive when Johnson so described this street. - So the fashion and glory of one generation passeth away after another like the fleeting clouds of summer. Where are the gay ones Johnson saw? All dead.

I next visited the menagerie of wild beasts; it was feeding time, when the Lions, Leopards, Panthers, Hyenas, Sloths, Wildcats, and Pelicans have their food, a few minutes before four, laid before them, so as to tempt them to dash, rage, and howl; and beat their cages with all the violence of enraged appetite. - It seems as if the building was unsafe and the cages would be broken.

I next went to view the skeleton of a whale, 104 feet long, the inside of the ribs allow a table and 24 persons to sit down. - The head is 24 feet, the tongue 20, height of the cranium 4 1/2 feet, length of the vertebral column 72 feet, number of vertebrae 62, length of ribs 9 1/2 feet, number of them 28, length of fins 13 feet, width of tail 22 feet, length 43 feet, weight 480,000 pounds. Baron Cuvier and the professors of the King's Garden in France calculate that he must have lived 9 or 10 centuries. - The upper jaw has 800 fanons or whalebones. The King of England permitted a Belgian, his owner, to erect a house which has been carried over Europe, with the skeleton on a square called the King's woods and forest six months without rent. This show has been seen but two days in London. - As I went down St. James Street, Picadilly, Pallmall and Bond - I found it was the Queen's drawing room day. - There was something like four or five hundred coaches with liveries blocking up the streets leading to the palace, with servants, liveries, coaches and harness, as I drew near the palace I saw a painted order of green cloth, the Queen's privy counsel's orders as to the manner and station coaches of certain should occupy what streets come through, where stop, and where retire. - From here I made my way across St. James Park to Westminster Abbey and gazed a while on this stupendous pile, and went to the house of Lords, supposing I might buy a ticket to get in the gallery. - But after going through room after room, and flight of stairs after flight - I was told money would not do, I must get the order of a peer. Many English gentlemen came and tried to get in, and were sent away with the same answer. I then thought I could buy a ticket as I had done in the gallery of the Commons - but that was full and I was retiring, reluctantly, down to Westminster Hall, when I was heard to complain that I could not get in to a gentlemen who was with me, when a man came up and whispered me that he could get me into the House of Lords, he knew he could. - I was much pleased, he told me to stand till he spoke another man who came, who agreed to get me in as his friend being an officer of the House of Lords, I gave the first man, slyly a shilling, and the man who conducted me, half a crown. - When we came to the great officers, the man asserted I was his particular friend, so they let me pass in to the House of Lords. I was located among young Lords and by the side of Peeresses, and others, who were in the north part of the House of Lords, the spectators being in this house in the same room and on the same level with the Lords with a little railing to separate. - I first heard Lord Eldon, an old man, with a white head, speak a few words. - Then Lord Dacres, a middle-aged man, then Earl Grey, the prime minister, who is a noble speaker and a man of sense and energy. - Then Earl Aberdeen, a youngerly man, made an attack upon the King's speech in relation to Belgium and Portugal. - Earl Grey replied and cut Aberdeen all to pieces, and spoke at great length, and with much zeal in defence of his administration and of the errors of the last. This brought out the Duke of Wellington, who acknowledged that the affair of July in France, and the revolution in Belgium upset his plans - complimented Earl Grey. - The Duke of Wellington is a middle sized man with a large Roman nose, he had on a bottle green surtout; white pantaloons over his boots, and a black waistcoat and white cravat, he speaks very well and appeared highly magnanimous.

Lord Melvin and the Earl of Limerick spoke a few words, and the fat old Duke of Buckingham said a word or two. - The Lords are dressed with the most perfect simplicity, so are the peeresses and their daughters, dressed no better than Cherry Valley Ladies; they affect, both Lords and ladies, at this time, great simplicity of dress, which is one way to distinguish themselves from their own gewgawed servants. - The Bishops and Chancellors were dressed in their robes of office. - The Lay-Lords appeared like every day gentlemen - Chancellor Brougham adjourned over till next Monday, and I then hastened two miles to my lodgings, where I found a polite letter from Col. Aspinwall the American Consul by which he promised to call on me when his indisposition was at an end. And also sent me a card by which I was introduced to one of the first reading rooms in London by simply putting my name on its back for the space of one month I visited the Room and looked over the Album, or Register of names of different gentlemen introduced and found divers names from New York, Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia, but saw no person whom I knew, I looked over New York papers up to the second of June and found nothing but complaints of hot weather while our weather at sea was everything but warm, being cold, cloudy and rainy.

Mr. Hammond goes on Tuesday next to Scotland, and I go to Paris by the way of Dover. He is fickle, unstable and laboring under a malady which renders him as capricious as the wind which blows; he don't know himself from day to day. I don't believe he ever will set foot on the continent of Europe. The newspapers show that this dreadful plague has broke out in Dublin and Aberdeen, and a Dr. McDonald, a surgeon in the British Army, who visited us today, a brother of the Lady of Archibald McIntire, tells me that he has been acquainted with the Indian and Russian Cholera Morbus, in the Isle of France, in the East Indies, and that he has seen a case this day in the City of London, of a soldier near the Thames, whom he thought was afflicted with it. His description of it is truly dreadful.

The morning papers announce that forty six vessels passed down the sound from the Baltic, the present seat of the India Cholera, with signals of unsound bills of health. - These vessels were, many of them, coming to England, Ireland and Scotland. They are afflicted with the Cholera, it is supposed by all who know anything about it. - The crisis is becoming badly alarming, I must visit Paris and some parts of France and then find my way to Havre and get on board of a packet for the United States, as it is absolutely unsafe to visit Amsterdam or Rome. - As it seems this visitation will permit no part of Europe to escape this tremendous scourge of the Almighty with which the Nations are threshed in his anger. - I think it is a duty I owe myself, family and friends to return home without any improvident exposure of my life.

June 26th 1831. Sabbath day 5 o'clock P.M. I have just returned from the 2nd afternoon service. My wife is now coming out of the Cherry Valley church at 12 o'clock at noon, and when I came home from church at noon here, she was just getting up and thinking about breakfast at 7 A.M. 5 hours difference in the Longitude of the two places. - I went today to the Finsbary Chapel near the beautiful Finsbary Park or square a large Scotch Presbyterian Church. - I was very politely furnished with an excellent pew by a gentleman, stranger to me, and had the pleasure of hearing one of the most eloquent and distinguished men in London, Mr. Fletcher. His prayer was a piece of uncommon eloquence, comprehensiveness, and glowing piety. He prayed for the King, the Queen, the Princes, the ministry, the nobles, the merchant and husbandmen, all operatives, mechanics, miners in the earth; sailors on the sea, with a beauty and excellence of description and distinction peculiar to the situation of each of those classes, surpassing everything I ever heard. - His text was the four first verses of the sixth chapter of Romans. - The discourse was very devout, eloquent and highly argumentative; he is supposed to be one of the first men in the kingdom, for talents. One good thing I noticed, he gave out all his appointments for the coming week before he began his sermon so as not to impair the effect of his discourse. His concluding prayer finished with the benediction so as to have no break between. There is one thing I shall never forget in his morning prayer, his praying for a widow woman at the point of death, who has an only daughter almost in despair at the prospect of the death of her mother, from Mr. Fletcher's account of it, his prayer was feeling beyond description; it seemed as though he would unlock the cold embrace of death. The Church has two immense galleries on above another like a theater.

I heard a black man, by the name of Preston, from Nova Scotia, preach this afternoon in the same church a discourse with a view to raise funds for promoting the Seamen's Friends Society.

He appeared like a pious, original minded man without education. When the contribution was taken up it was at the doors, where the plates were presented as the congregation were going out after they were dismissed.

In the forenoon, Mr. Fletcher gave out that a Temperance meeting was to be held at Exeter Hall in the Strand on Tuesday next to form a society, at which the Bishop of London and some other great dignitaries of the church, with some of the nobility were to attend. Mr. Fletcher mentioned the great Temperance Reformation in the town of Alimyr in Scotland, and many others. The newspapers here have also mentioned the subject, and cite the United States as a country, where the matter has been thoroughly tested.

I accidentally passed Guild Hall today where the Wisiprius Courts of the Common Pleas and King's Bench for the City of London are held, also the Oyer and Lerminer and the General and special Sessions, or in other words, Quarter Sessions. The Prothonatary's officer - Felazer and the different places to obtain process. The Livery of London or Commonally hold their elections for their two sheriffs, aldermen and members of Parliament at Guild hall. The poll which is now open for the two sheriffs continues fourteen days in which the votes are taken instead of three as with us. George the 4th has been dead a year today, and William has been King a year; for the latter cause, at three different times today, all the bells in London have rang and chime their mercy peals. - It is wonderful how near they can approach to music with them. The cannons at the Tower were fired at 12 o'clock. These demonstrations on the sabbath, or any other day, are childish, and to me appear slavish and mean. - The King offered fifty guineas the other day to the celebrated Mrs. Paganmini, the Italian vocalist, to perform for him, she and her husband refused under five hundred guineas. - The King would not give it so the lady did not sing for him. - The celebrated Mrs. Siddons died about a fortnight since. - Her talents have not been equalled in any degree since she left the stage. Miss O'Neill is supposed to have come nearest to Mrs. Siddons. - The Thames Tunnel is abandoned for the present. - The manner in which the water was stopped, when it broke through, was to make a raft forty feet square and covered it with thirty tons of blue clay and sunk it and covered the hole, and then the water was pumped out the Tunnel. - This was a noble patch, to patch the bottom of the Thames with; the earth was only sixteen feet thick where the bed of the Thames dropped in; it is supposed had it been six feet thicker the accident would not have occurred; L200,000 is wanting to finish the work, without which it will not be completed. - It is now at a dead stand. - These things I was told, but did not see them, understanding it did not differ in form from the Manchester and Liverpool Railway Tunnel which I had been through. They draw small hand carts with dogs in London; Poor men use jack-asses very much in England, women likewise; but those who are too poor to get a jack fix a tackling for a dog under the axletree of the cart, and the dog and the man will draw four or five hundred weight about the sheets. - The Mayor since I came here issued his proclamation that dogs should not be used for drafts in this way without they were muzzled and the cart numbered as the dogs were apt to bite those, who came about it and there being no number on the cart the person bitten was without redress. - So much for the London dog law.