He went to sketch Netley Abbey:—
“While I was drawing, several parties came to visit the Abbey, and I entered into conversation with most of them. One gentleman was finding great fault with the taste of the proprietor of the Abbey. He said, ‘Now, if this was my Abbey, I’d get some masons and stop up all the holes, and I don’t know if I should not whitewash it. Would not you, Sir?’ I thought this opening speech promised fair, so that I nodded assent to induce him to go on; and he proceeded: ‘Then I’d remove all this rubbish (pointing to the masses of stonework which lay on the ground) and fetch some loads of gravel from the beach, with which I would cover the floor of the chapel, and have it rolled nice and flat; or I don’t know whether I should not lay turf instead, and keep the grass cut short, and as level as a bowling-green. Then I’d build a nice thatched cottage just by the gate there for the porter to live at; but I think I should have it within the chapel, because it would add very much to its appearance. The Abbey would be worth coming to see then; but now the fellow that owns it must be a fool.’ The gentleman then asked me what I thought of his proposed alterations, and I told him that they would certainly make the chapel look very neat and pretty. ‘Ah!’ says he, ‘I see you are a young man of taste.’ I did not think it necessary to contradict him. He wished me good morning, and walked off, and I resumed my drawing, rejoicing that the Abbey was in better hands than his.”
Crossing over to the Isle of Wight he passed through the village of Freshwater:—
“Wishing to be acquainted with the etymology of the name Freshwater, I asked the sailors if the water in the bay was not so salt as the sea-water generally is. ‘Oh, yes,’ they replied, ‘it’s all alike.’ ‘What, then, is the reason of the names Freshwater Town and Freshwater Bay?’ I inquired. ‘Why, they are in Freshwater parish to be sure,’ was the reply.”
On his way home he saw Stonehenge:—
“It is certain that great numbers of the stones have been carried off (I suppose in pieces), and afterwards used in building, as Inigo Jones mentions in his account of Stonehenge that such was the case between two different periods at which he visited the Temple. What must be the feelings of those who could, for the sake of the value of stones as building materials, disturb and destroy so venerable, so interesting a monument of antiquity, I cannot guess. I think it would be well if the government of the country would purchase this and every other valuable antiquity of the island, and preserve them as much as possible from injury.”
In one of the papers that he drew up in his old age, he thus describes his last visit to Stonehenge:—
“We also went to see Stonehenge, for about the tenth time in my life, since whenever there was a chance to visit this most interesting and much controverted antiquity I never failed to take advantage of it. But this, my last visit, was a very different affair indeed from my first in 1817. Forty-three years before I had set out for Stonehenge, in company with my father, breakfasting on the way at a small inn, a mile or two from the place. While my father rested I went, sketch-book in hand, to the so-called Druidic temple. Not a creature, human or animal, was in sight, not even the ‘Shepherd of Salisbury Plain’ himself. I was alone with the wonderful stone monument, and nothing but the sky and the vast downs in sight. By-and-by came a shepherd, chatty and communicative, with fifteen hundred sheep, and thus only was my solitude broken upon. But to-day (1860) what a change! Easy communication and love of locomotion had vulgarized even Stonehenge. We found a crowd of people making noisy the place, and rudely shattering my early peaceful associations.”
In April, 1817, he had recorded his “intention of making experiments to ascertain the comparative nourishment which is derived from different kinds of food.” In the following January he records the result:—
“My engagements this half-year are such as will not allow me to continue my experiments upon food, as I am obliged to be out very much. I have, therefore, brought my experiments to a conclusion without having completed them. But, however, I have ascertained some remarkable facts, as the Journal will show, and I hope that my trouble will not altogether be thrown away.