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Shrove Tuesday reminds him of the Pancake Greaze, and Dr Smith's annual joke pan kakon (Greek = everything is bad). Wouldn't be surprised to learn that Liddell has abolished it - no idea where the custom originated, but abolition would hurt the feelings of many. More on the change of grammar textbook and moves to abandon the Latin Play (on the grounds of immorality in the Eunuchus). Smith O'Brien still in prison under sentence - the penal system used to be too brutal, but now seems too compassionate. Cholera continues to scare.

Visits to Monasteries in the Levant by Robert Curzon - maybe a son or nephew of their old friend David Curzon OW (actually David was 1st cousin once removed to Robert). Has no room for new books, so uses a circulating library. His contempt for novels. On the murders at Stanfield Hall. Examinations at Oxford have become tougher - but the clergy of his young day no less effective than clergy nowadays. Has JB's son stationed at Charlemont written of a proposal to drain Lough Neagh, the finest lake in the British dominion ? (Part of a proposal to make the River Hind navigable from Roscommon to the Shannon.) If it happens they may find old arms which HMC removed from rebels and threw in there during the rebellion of 1798. On the excavation of Ninevah.

New Year wishes. Their friendship began in 1779 - list of the senior King's Scholars of that year (Dickens, Markham, Kelly, Greenhill and Lindsay, Wood, Hawkes and Barnard - listed in the order of their election in 1780 to Oxford and Cambridge respectively, so presumably HMC was consulting e.g. Alumni Westmonasterienses).

Answers a query from JB of a year before (actually three - see 13 for more details) - Mr, now Sir, Charles Trevelyan (assistant secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury, appointed KCB in 1848) is the son of their old friend George Trevelyan.

This might be his last letter - suffering appallingly from lumbago.

Lumbago slightly better - he can rise for a little from his bed. During sleepless nights has been recalling passages of Virgil and Horace, some of them rather gloomy.

Lumbago better yet - he can rise from his bed. Dean Buckland has lost his reason, the third such they know; Dean Turton did so before him, the father-in-law of their old schoolfellow Yates (Joseph Yates - Thomas Turton was in fact his step-father), and Dean Vincent as well. The Tothill Fields they knew is gone , along with the dirty lake in the centre - instead magnificent squares and elegant villas are springing up (presumably the developments of Thomas Cubitt). Does the railroad benefit or injure the comforts of JB's neighbourhood?

JB coming to stay on way to and from Woolwich (see 64), bidding his son farewell before he departs for Newfoundland (see 68).

Requires 2 or 3 days notice of JB's projected visit (see 75) - his secretary William Jenkins will meet JB, and escort him through the crowd of cabs and pickpockets to the house.