“On Apr. 9th my wife’s two sisters, Elizabeth and Georgiana Smith, came to stay with me.—­On Apr. 22nd I began lectures, and finished on May 21st:  there were 54 names.  During the course of the lectures I communicated a Paper to the Philosophical Society ’On the calculation of Newton’s experiments on Diffraction.’—­I went to London on the Visitation of the Greenwich Observatory:  the dinner had been much restricted, but was now made more open.—­It had been arranged that the meeting of the British Association was to be held this year at Cambridge.  I invited Sir David Brewster and Mr Herschel to lodge at the Observatory.  The meeting lasted from June 24th to 30th.  We gave one dinner, but had a breakfast party every day.  I did not enter much into the scientific business of the meeting, except that I brought before the Committee the expediency of reducing the Greenwich Planetary Observations from 1750.  They agreed to represent it to the Government, and a deputation was appointed (I among them) who were received by Lord Althorp on July 25th.  On Aug. 3rd Herschel announced to me that L500 was granted.

“On Aug. 7th I started with my wife for Edensor.  At Leicester we met Sedgwick and Whewell:  my wife went on to Edensor, and I joined Sedgwick and Whewell in a geological expedition to Mount Sorrel and various parts of Charnwood Forest.  We were received by Mr Allsop of Woodlands, who proved an estimable acquaintance.  This lasted four or five days, and we then went on to Edensor.—­On Aug. 15th Herschel wrote to me, communicating an offer of the Duke of Northumberland to present to the Cambridge Observatory an object-glass of about 12 inches aperture by Cauchaix.  I wrote therefore to the Duke, accepting generally.  The Duke wrote to me from Buxton on Aug. 23rd (his letter, such was the wretched arrangement of postage, reaching Bakewell and Edensor on the 25th) and on the 26th I drove before breakfast to Buxton and had an interview with him.  On Sept. 1st the Duke wrote, authorizing me to mount the telescope entirely, and he subsequently approved of Cauchaix’s terms:  there was much correspondence, but on Dec. 28th I instructed Cauchaix how to send the telescope.—­On our return we paid a visit to Dr Davy, Master of Caius College, at Heacham, and reached Cambridge on Oct. 8th.

“Groombridge’s Catalogue, of which the editing was formally entrusted to Mr Henry Taylor (son of Taylor the first-assistant of the Greenwich Observatory), had been in some measure referred to Sheepshanks:  and he, in investigating the work, found reason for thinking the whole discreditable.  About May he first wrote to me on his rising quarrel with H. Taylor, but on Sept. 7th he found things coming to a crisis, and denounced the whole.  Capt.  Beaufort the Hydrographer (in whose office this matter rested) begged me with Baily to decide upon it.  We did not at first quite agree upon the terms of investigation &c., but after a time all was settled, and on Oct. 4th the Admiralty formally applied, and I formally accepted.  Little or nothing had been done by Mr Baily and myself, when my work was interrupted by illness.