15th.--... Read the third volume of Carlyle’s _Miscellanies_. The glorious kind-hearted old chap! _Boswell_, _Diderot_, _Cagliostro and the Necklace_, are the best in the book, and among what he has ever done best. The _Johnson_, _Göthe_, _Edward Irving_, among (to me) the unsatisfactory ones; overdone, too many immensities, eternities, and such-like superfluities; sometimes whole pages of mere gilded wind-bladders, looking something like real nuggets, but not so. Seek to grasp them, and they bob off in most tantalizing fashion--(this is Carlylean, I hope). On the other hand, we must allow the great man his occasional weaknesses and caprices and flatulencies. Real gold and solid weight and a close-packed wisdom is not wanting in the general run of it; more indeed than is attainable in any other writing now published, I opine. As he said himself, Roland of Ronceval must himself have been constipated at times.... 19th.--Worked at the sketch of Hampstead for Woolner:[145] it is jolly. 20th.--Cuttle-fished the little landscape, and painted “ye moon” from nature. Called on Woolner, who declares we are more devil-worshipers than Christians. His reason for the great popularity of Lord Palmerston is that he is treacherous and pugnacious, which are the two chief characteristics of us English, and that therefore, being the most so of any, he by natural force or gravitation is the King of England. However, Prince Albert _is_ our King--worse luck. John Cross told him that Monsieur Picot, who was president of the Royal Commission of Fine Arts at Paris, affirmed that it was entirely owing to the pressing solicitude of Lord Elcho that the prizes were given as they were; that the French jurors had awarded the chief medal to Mulready. McDowell[146] voted for himself nineteen times; so they gave no medal to the sculpture.... 24th.--... Spent the morning putting up holly and evergreens instead of working. I fear I have much to repent on the score of idleness. Read Carlyle’s _Miscellanies_.... 1856, 1st January.--A dull foggy day. Disgusted with my landscape: stuck it up against the wall, and worked at it from a distance. Painted out all the easel, box, etc., in front, that took me so much time to paint from nature. Made the whole right again.... 2nd.--... Seddon again called, with a letter he had just received from Hunt; who is on his return, I am glad to hear, but ill. I fear, a nature that works beyond its strength. 5th.--... Worked at the pencil _King Lear_, and finished it; my destiny being (as Novalis said of Göthe) “to finish whatever I may have begun.”