At dinner I was seated next to Mr. Buckle, and thus had an opportunity for private conversation.  He asked about American books, and told me his opinion of those he had read.  He said that Quincy’s History of Harvard University was the latest book on America he received before leaving England.  He preferred Kent’s exposition of the United States Constitution to Story’s, although this also he had consulted and used.  He had not seen Mr. Charles Francis Adams’s complete edition of the works of his grandfather, nor Parton’s Life of Jackson, both of which I begged him to read, particularly the chapters in the former in which are traced the steps in the progress of making the American Constitutions.  He told me about his library in London, which is surpassed (among private libraries) only by that belonging to Mr. Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister, whose wife is the daughter of our Bostonian Mr. Bates, of Barings.  Buckle has twenty-two thousand volumes, all selected by himself; and he takes great pleasure in them.  He spends eight or nine hundred pounds a year upon his library.  He owns copies of all the books referred to in his History; some of them are very old and rare.  He also possesses a considerable collection, made likewise by himself, of curiosities in natural history; he has added largely to it in Egypt, where, in fact, he has been buying with open hands.  He said he could not be perfectly happy in leaving the country, if obliged to go away without a crocodile’s egg, a trophy which as yet he has been unable to obtain.

He told me his plan of travel in America.  He will not set out until our domestic troubles are composed, for he desires to see the practical working of our institutions in their normal state, not confused and disturbed by the excitements of war.  He would go first to Boston and New York, the intellectual and commercial heads (as he said) of the republic,—­and to Washington, the political capital.  He would then like to pass from the Northern into the Southern States, but asked if he could travel safely in the latter, in view of his extreme opinions in detestation of slavery.  I assured him that nobody would dare to molest one so well known, even if our war did not abate forever the nuisance of lynching, to say nothing of its probable effect in promoting the extinction of slavery.  From the Southern States he said he would wish to pass into Mexico, thence to Peru and to Chili; then to cross the Pacific Ocean to Japan, to China, to India, and so back by the overland route to England.  This magnificent scheme he has seriously resolved upon, and proposes to devote to it two or three years.  He undertakes it partly for information and partly for relaxation of his mental faculties, which he has injured by overwork, and which imperatively demand repose.  He asked many questions with regard to matters of detail,—­whether he would find conveyance by steamers in the Pacific, and of what sort would be the accommodations in them and in sailing-vessels.