MY DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT: On the 19th, Saturday, we breakfasted with Lady Byron and my friend, Miss Murray, at Mr. Rogers’. He and Lady Byron had not met for many, many years, and their renewal of old friendship was very interesting to witness. Mr. Rogers told me that he first introduced her to Lord Byron. After breakfast he had been repeating some lines of poetry which he thought fine, when he suddenly exclaimed: “But there is a bit of American _prose_, which, I think, had more poetry in it than almost any modern verse.” He then repeated, I should think, more than a page from Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast,” describing the falling overboard of one of the crew, and the effect it produced, not only at the moment, but for some time afterward. I wondered at his memory, which enabled him to recite so beautifully a long prose passage, so much more difficult than verse. Several of those present with whom the book was a favorite, were so glad to hear from me that it was as _true_ as interesting, for they had regarded it as partly a work of imagination. Lady Byron had told Mr. Rogers when she came in that Lady Lovelace, her daughter (Ada) wished also to pay him a visit, and would come after breakfast to join us for half an hour. She also had not seen Rogers, I _believe_, ever. Lady Lovelace joined us soon after breakfast, and as we were speaking of the enchantment of Stafford House on Wednesday evening, Mr. Rogers proposed to go over it and see its fine pictures by daylight. He immediately went himself by a short back passage through the park to ask permission and returned with all the eagerness and gallantry of a young man to say that he had obtained it. We had thus an opportunity of seeing, in the most leisurely way and in the most delightful society, the fine pictures and noble apartments of Stafford House again. . . . On Tuesday Mr. Hallam took us to the British Museum, and being a director, he could enter on a private day, when we were not annoyed by a crowd, and, moreover, we had the advantage of the best interpreters and guides. We did not even enter the library, which requires a day by itself, but confined ourselves to the Antiquity rooms. . . . As I entered the room devoted to the Elgin marbles, the works of the “divine Phidias,” I stepped with awe, as if entering a temple, and the Secretary, who was by my side, observing it, told me that the Grand Duke Constantine, when he came a few days before, made, as he entered, a most profound and reverential bow. This was one of my most delightful mornings, and I left the Antiquities with a stronger desire to see them again than before I had seen them at all. Sunday, June 27th.