On Saturday evening Lord William Fitzroy and daughter joined our party with Sir William Hooker and Lady Hooker. . . . Sir William Hooker is one of the most interesting persons I have seen in England. He is a great naturalist and has the charge of the great Botanical Gardens at Kew. He devoted a morning to us there, and it was the most delightful one I have passed. There are twenty-eight different conservatories filled with the vegetable wonders of the whole world. Length of time and regal wealth have conspired to make the Kew gardens beyond our conceptions entirely. . . . Sir William pointed out to us all that was very rare or curious, which added much to my pleasure. . . . He showed us a drawing of the largest _flower_ ever known on earth, which Sir Stamford Raffles discovered in Sumatra. It was a parasite without leaves or stem, and the flower weighed fifteen pounds. Lady Raffles furnished him the materials for the drawing. I dined in company with her not long ago, and regret now that I did not make her tell me about the wonders of that region. At the same dinner you may meet so many people, each having their peculiar gift, that one cannot avail oneself of the opportunity of extracting from each what is precious. I always wish I could sit by everybody at the same time, and I could often employ a dozen heads, if I had them, instead of my poor, miserable one. From Sir William Hooker _I_ learned as much about the _vegetable_ world, as Mr. Bancroft did from the Dean of Ely on _architecture_, when he expounded to him the cathedral of Ely; pointing out the successive styles of the Gothic, and the different periods in which the different parts were built. Books are dull teachers compared with these gifted men giving you a lecture upon subjects before your eyes. On Sunday we dined with out own party; on Monday some diplomatic people, the Lisboas and one of Mr. Bates’s partners, and on Tuesday we came home. I must not omit a visit while we were there from Mr. Taylor (Van Artevelde), who is son-in-law of Lord Monteagle, and lives in the neighborhood. He has a fine countenance and still finer voice, and is altogether one of those literary persons who do not disappoint you, but whose whole being is equal to their works. I hope to see more of him, as they spoke of “_cultivating_” us, and Mr. Taylor was quite a _protégé_ of our kind and dear friend, Dr. Holland, and dedicated his last poem to him. This expression, “I shall _cultivate_ you,” we hear constantly, and it strikes me as oddly as our Western “_being raised_.” Indeed, I hear improper Anglicisms constantly, and they have nearly as many as we have. The upper classes, here, however, do _speak_ English so roundly and fully, giving every _letter_ its due, that it pleases my ear amazingly.