e going back
in a pet, to Naseby. . . . I enquired at Spedding's rooms to-day: he is
expected by the 20th, which is near. Laurence is the only person I know
in town. . . . He and I went to see Carlyle at Chelsea yesterday. That
genius has been surveying the field of battle of Naseby in company with
Dr. Arnold, who died soon after, poor man! I doubt (from Carlyle's
description) if they identified the very ground of the carnage. . . . I
have heard nothing of Thackeray for these two months. He was to have
visited an Irish brother of mine: but he has not yet done so. I called
at Coram Street yesterday, and old John seemed to think he was yet in
Ireland.' With this correction I now give the Memorandum referred to,
which FitzGerald entrusted to my keeping together with several of
Carlyle's letters. An attempt to put up a monument on the real site of
the battle proved abortive, as will appear hereafter.

'About the middle of September 1842, W. M. Thackeray took me to tea
with Carlyle whom I had not previously known. He was then busy with
Cromwell; had just been, he told us, over the Field of Naseby in
company with Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and had sufficiently identified the
Ground of the Battle with the contemporaneous Accounts of it. As I
happened to know the Field well--the greater part of it then belonging
to my Family--I knew that Carlyle and Arnold had been mistaken--misled
in part by an Obelisk which my Father had set up as on the highest
Ground of the Field, but which they mistook for the centre-ground of
the Battle. This I told Carlyle, who was very reluctant to believe
that he and Arnold could have been deceived--that he could accept no
hearsay Tradition or Theory against the Evidence of his own Eyes, etc.
However, as I was just then going down to Naseby, I might enquire
further into the matter.

'On arriving at Naseby, I had spade and mattock taken to a hill near
half a mile across from the "Blockhead Obelisk," and pitted with
several hollows, overgrown with rank Vegetation, which Tradition had
always pointed to as the Graves of the Slain. One of these I had
opened; and there, sure enough, were the remains of Skeletons closely
packed together--chiefly teeth--but some remains of Shinbone, and
marks of Skull in the Clay. Some of these, together with some
sketches of the Place, I sent to Carlyle.

'The Naseby Monument, already advised by C