Fine day. Wrote some letters, among others one to Mr Palfrey. After luncheon went to the Exhibition of the royal Academy, where I spent three hours running over the pictures. As a general thing I was disappointed. The English school does not improve. They are not running into two channels. One of the hard, ungainly, angular preraphaelitism, and the other the silly domestic sentimentalism of smirking mothers and dramatic dull children still another fancy is nursed from Tennison’s poetry which in him sounds pretty but in them degenerates into mawkish affectation. The Portraits generally bad. Two pictures of Faed in his peculiar line of Scotch low life have character and tone. One pained by a Norwedgian of a death in a brawl is vigorous, but disagreeable. A large piece by Leighton of Dante expelled from Florence has good parts—one however approaching to the grotesque. Sir Edwin Landseer has a large painting of two white bears playing among the relics of Franklin’s party in the arctic regions. Strong, but cheerless and very unsatisfactory to look at. A couple of smaller ones of his very good. Millais has three in his minor style which is admirable. The schlpture was some of ti better than usual. In the evening we went to Lady Wensleydale’s reception. Rather more full than her ordinary ones. We remained about half an hour.43