"On Aug. 7th I started with my wife for Edensor. At Leicester we met Sedgwick and Whewell: my wife went on to Edensor, and I joined Sedgwick and Whewell in a geological expedition to Mount Sorrel and various parts of Charnwood Forest. We were received by Mr Allsop of Woodlands, who proved an estimable acquaintance. This lasted four or five days, and we then went on to Edensor.--On Aug. 15th Herschel wrote to me, communicating an offer of the Duke of Northumberland to present to the Cambridge Observatory an object-glass of about 12 inches aperture by Cauchaix. I wrote therefore to the Duke, accepting generally. The Duke wrote to me from Buxton on Aug. 23rd (his letter, such was the wretched arrangement of postage, reaching Bakewell and Edensor on the 25th) and on the 26th I drove before breakfast to Buxton and had an interview with him. On Sept. 1st the Duke wrote, authorizing me to mount the telescope entirely, and he subsequently approved of Cauchaix's terms: there was much correspondence, but on Dec. 28th I instructed Cauchaix how to send the telescope.--On our return we paid a visit to Dr Davy, Master of Caius College, at Heacham, and reached Cambridge on Oct. 8th. "Groombridge's Catalogue, of which the editing was formally entrusted to Mr Henry Taylor (son of Taylor the first-assistant of the Greenwich Observatory), had been in some measure referred to Sheepshanks: and he, in investigating the work, found reason for thinking the whole discreditable. About May he first wrote to me on his rising quarrel with H. Taylor, but on Sept. 7th he found things coming to a crisis, and denounced the whole. Capt. Beaufort the Hydrographer (in whose office this matter rested) begged me with Baily to decide upon it. We did not at first quite agree upon the terms of investigation &c., but after a time all was settled, and on Oct. 4th the Admiralty formally applied, and I formally accepted. Little or nothing had been done by Mr Baily and myself, when my work was interrupted by illness. "Sheepshanks had thought that something might be done to advance the interests of myself or the Observatory by the favour of Lord Brougham (then Lord Chancellor), and had urged me to write an article in the Penny Cyclopaedia, in which Lord Brougham took great interest. I chose the subject 'Gravitation,' and as I think wrote a good deal of it in this Autumn: when it was interrupted by my illness.