26 June–2 July 1848

Mr. Owen invited Hillard ' and myself to in- spect the Hunterian (John Hunter) Museum, of which he is the Curator. Afterwards, he would carry us to Turner, the artist, who is his friend. We met accordingly at his chambers and he showed us over the Museum, communicating a great, deal of valuable information, of which I deeply regret that I omitted to make immediate record. He gave a sad history of the misuse and voluntary destruction of Hunter's manuscripts by Sir Everard Home, who had built his own scientific reputation on the private use he had made of these manuscripts, and then destroyed them to hide his debt. He was displaced, and Owen himself appointed to the care of the Mu- seum, and he does not like to sleep one night away from it. One of these days when the Mu- seum shall be confided to other and sufficient hands, he said, he shall feel at liberty to come to-America, and read lectures to the Lowell In- stitute of Boston, as Mr. Lowell bas pressed him to do. He thought Faraday would also come to Boston. Owen seemed to me an Englishman who had made a prodigious stride in scientific liberalism for an Englishman, and indemnified himself in the good opinion of his countrymen by fixing a certain fierce limitation to his prog- ress, and abusing without mercy all such as ven- tured a little farther ; these poor transmutation- ists, for example.