A stream of visitors which continued until quite a late hour. A great many Americans are coming over and most of them being letters to me. Dr McGowan and Mr Sweet came on the part of Americans here to ask me to preside at an entertainment to celebrate the fourth of July. I mentioned my objection on the score of delicacy towards the English, who could never recur to that event excepting as a source of mortification, as well as of propriety in the preset very critical condition of the relations between the two countries. I could not therefore promise to take part in the matter, but I would by no means dictate to others what they ought to do. Of course I shall rouse much hostility among the lower class of American Adventurers here by this course, but that is inevitable if I do my duty. At four I accompanied Mrs Adams and Mary to the flower show in the Botanic garden in the regent’s park. It was not so brilliant as the preceding one because the american plants had for the most part gone out, but the display of pelagonia and Orchids and heaths and roses was fine. The risk of rain drove away every ody under cover and spoilt the out door amusement. a very great crowd as usual. In the evening Mrs Adams and I to a reception at the Athenæum Club. A very large number of person of whom I knew perhaps a dozen. The library is a fine one, and the edifice is spacious. Although I was admitted a member on my first arrival here, as well as at the Traveller’s, I am so little of a club man that I never have set my foot in either before.129