Saw three fellows at the end of Royce Wood, who I found were laying out the plan for an iron railway from Manchester to London. It is to cross over Round Oak spring by Royce Wood corner for Woodcroft Castle. I little thought that fresh intrusions would interrupt and spoil my solitudes. After the enclosure they will despoil a boggy place that is famous for orchises at Royce Wood end. June 23.-- Wrote to Mrs. Emmerson and sent a letter to "Hone's Every-day Book," with a poem which I fathered on Andrew Marvel. July 12.-- Went to-day to see Artis: found him busy over his antiquities and fossils. He told me a curious thing about the manner in which the golden-crested wren builds her nest: he says it is the only English bird that suspends its nest, which it hangs on three twigs of the fir branch, and it glues the eggs at the bottom of the nest, with the gum out of the tree, to keep them from being thrown out by the wind, which often turns them upside down without injury. August 21.-- Received a letter from Mr. Emmerson which tells me that Lord Radstock died yesterday. He was the best friend I have met with. Though he possessed too much simple-heartedness to be a fashionable friend or hypocrite, yet it often led him to take hypocrites for honest friends and to take an honest man for a hypocrite. September 11.-- Went to meet Mr. and Mrs. Emmerson at the New Inn at Deeping, and spent three days with them. From "No. 5 in the Appendix."-- I will set down before I forget it a memorandum to say that I desire Mrs. Emmerson will do just as she pleases with any MSS. of mine which she may have in her possession, to publish them or not as she chooses; but I desire that any living names mentioned in my letters may be filled up by * * * and all objectionable passages omitted--a wish which I hope will be invariably complied with by all. I also intend to make Mr. Emmerson one of the new executors in my new will. I wish to lie on the north side of the churchyard, about the middle of the ground, where the morning and evening sun can linger the longest on my grave. I wish to have a rough unhewn stone, something in the form of a mile stone, [sketched in the margin] so that the playing boys may not break it in their heedless pastimes, with nothing more on it than this inscription:--"Here rest the hopes and ashes of John Clare." I desire that no date be inserted thereon, as I wish it to live or die with my poems and other writings, which if they have merit with posterity it will, and if they have not it is not worth preserving. October 8th, 1824. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."