"Although my occupation in the Wellington Palace is a very honourable one, and the study and exercise of invention in the course of it may be profitable, yet I cannot help wishing I had never been invited to give an idea for it, for I have spent a vast deal of time over it, and it will add nothing to my reputation, even if it does not detract from it. If such a design was difficult to everyone, you may imagine what it was to me who have never attempted anything original before. I consulted every architectural work of Europe (they are all in the library here), and I would have consulted every professional man I could get at if there had been any here whose opinion was worth having. Then I composed general ideas, and finally fixed on one which pleased Mr. North and several other persons to whom I showed it; but when I went into detail I found the difficulties increase immeasurably, and the notions which were plausible while they were vague could not be put into execution. Plan would not agree with elevation. Doors and windows would not come into their right places. I invented roundabout ways for simple ends. In fact I worked furiously, and for the first time realised the practical difficulties of the profession. At last, when I had filled a portfolio with sketches and schemes, I completed a set and showed them to Lord and Lady Burghersh, who said they were pleased with them. I began to feel that I had too large an acquaintance in Florence--too many visits and invitations. My wound [?], of which I did not get the better, confined me, and that made me generally unwell and obliged me to go through a course of physic. Altogether I got out of heart with my work and determined to get away. I went to Pisa for the month of July, and except for visits from Pigou I was quite alone. There I undid all I had done before, and finding that to do the thing well I should need more time than I could possibly give, I determined to make some small sketches which, prettily finished, might attract attention and show that I was in some sort capable. Finally, I made some sketches and sent them with an explanation to Lady Burghersh and a request to forward them to the proper quarter." The difficulties he had encountered over these drawings so disgusted him with architecture that he seems to have even proposed to his father to throw it up and become a painter, as that, he thought, was the profession for which he was best suited. But Mr. Cockerell, who was a steady business man, had no notion of his son becoming what he would have considered a bohemian, and refused to sanction any such change.