26 June 1871 – 2 July 1871

In Battersea Park. We go by rose- garden ; ask the gardener a question, and he answers in a rude surly fashion ; we agree that these are ' Saxon ' manners, and that the Irish have much sweeter. We passed some tall foxgloves, which I admired : ' Ah,' said he, without looking at them, ' old Mother Nature is profuse in her gifts ! ' His insensi- bility to the beauty of flowers is one of the odd things in C, he allows it as a fact but does not feel it. Mem. — He has little or no sense of smell. He told me of an old man, a pauper (' bandster '), who sang Border Ballads in the Annandale dialect ; C. imitated him. Of ignorant old Scots wife who, speaking of some family, said, ' There's twa sons, baith doin' weel in Glasgie ; tane's an Imposter, and t'ither's a Malefactor ' ; it was found that she meant ' Upholsterer ' and ' Manufacturer.' Once more the longest day is past, we recollected. ' A day,' he mused, ' how strange ! A year — where is it gone .'' Time — is it real, or not } Kant says it is but our way of seeing things. I can conceive this, but am not able entirely to accept the thought. " Forty years make great odds in a lass " — ah, that's true enough.' He then spoke affectionately of his Mother and her piety. As we crossed Battersea Bridge coming back, C. said, ' Leigh Hunt used to walk with me in the first years after I came to Chelsea. He was sweet and dignified, and his talk like the song of a nightingale. He was delighted with everything in our house, — my Wife's playing of Scotch melodies, Scotch brose for supper, — praised everything: gradually, however, he found I was not a Shelley — had a foundation of Presbyterianism which was not agreeable to him. He met with much contradiction, and ceased to come to walk with me ; but we continued very friendly.'