3 o’clock.—Visited the Thames Tunnel—found Brunel a devilish deep fellow—he explained to me the means by which he worked, and said he had got nearly over all his difficulties—I suppose he meant to say he had nearly got under them—at all events the tunnel, when completed, will be a vast convenience to the metropolis, particularly to the lower classes. From the Tunnel went to Billingsgate-market—confiscated a basket of suspicious shrimps, and ordered them to be conveyed to the Mansion-house. Mem. Have them for breakfast to-morrow. Return to dress for dinner, having promised to take the chair at the Grand Annual Metropolitan Anti-Hydro-without-gin-drinking Association.
Here a hiatus occurs in the MS.; but from cotemporary authorities we are enabled to state that his lordship was conveyed home at two o’clock on the following morning, by some jolly companions.
“Slowly and sadly they smoothed his bed, And they told his wife and daughter To give him, next day, a couple of red- Herrings and soda-water.”
THE LOVES OF THE PLANTS.
The gay Daffodilly, an amorous blade,
Stole out of his bed in the dark,
And calling his brother, Jon-Quil, forth he stray’d
To breathe his love vows to a Violet maid