honor of riding on a very fine and gentle elephant; I say "honor," because the immense animal was so well trained and so obedient as to be an example to many human beings who are neither. The Duchess of A—— came in while I was there,—a large, very fat, red-faced woman, but with a sweet voice, who departed in a coach drawn by four horses with two riders, and two footmen behind; almost as much attendance as when she was a queen on the boards of ——theatre, thirty years ago.
January 28. I received a letter from D. Lizars to-day announcing to me the loss of four subscribers; but these things do not damp my spirits half so much as the smoke of London. I am as dull as a beetle.
January 31. I have been in my room most of this day, and very dull in this dark town.
February 1, 1828. Another Journal! It has now twenty-six brothers;[1] some are of French manufacture, some from Gilpin's "Mills on the Brandywine," some from other parts of America, but you are positively a Londoner. I bought you yesterday from a man across the street for fourteen shillings; and what I write in you is for my wife, Lucy Audubon, a matchless woman, and for my two Kentucky lads, whom I do fervently long to press to my heart again.
It has rained all day. Bentley and I paid a visit to the great anatomist, Dr. J. Brookes,[2] to see his collection of skeletons of divers objects. He received us with extreme kindness. I saw in his yard some few rare birds. He was called away on sudden and important business before we saw his museum, so we are to go on Monday. Mr. Cross, of the Exeter Exchange, had invited Bentley and me to dinner with his quadrupeds and bipeds, and at three o'clock we took a coach, for the rain was too heavy for Bentley, and drove to the Menagerie. Mr. Cross by no means
