Frankfort^<1>
5 Sept

My dear Henry

Here is the only letter I find for you.

I thought you were going to the Meuse & Moselle.^<2> You do not see half enough when you come abroad. Is Horatia ^<3> coming with the M^t Edgcumbes? ^<4>

The Trahernes ^<5> are due these ten days – they must have met with a bad inn & turned back disgusted.

I am glad you have some good things in your garden – We have the anemone japonica here & very pretty – also Hibiscus palustris, which I never could get to flower – Glycine Apios – which I never saw but here – Cleome arborea – Oxalis lasiandra – & Helianthus orgyialis –

Have you seen the new planet ^<6>

Y^r Aff
W F S

If the garden at Lacock as you say does not flourish why not plant strange trees & shrubs – on the principle of an arboretum – have all the oaks all the Poplars, all the Magnolias & any other fine hardy genera you have space & soil for that & lie out of the wind, a valuable circumstance for trees.

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Notes:

1. Frankfurt am Main, where William had a diplomatic posting.

2. The River Meuse flows through France, Belgium and Holland; the River Moselle flows through France, Luxemburg and Germany.

3. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.

4. Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding, Lady Mt Edgcumbe (1808–1881); WHFT’s half-sister, and her husband.

5. Charlotte Louisa 'Charry' Traherne, née Talbot (1800–1880), WHFT’s cousin, and her husband.

6. WTHFS was in Frankfort from 1841–1848. However, 1847 was a critical year in planet study. Inspired by the discovery of Neptune in 1846, and finally following William Herschel's decades-old suggestion, the former 'minor planets' Astraea, Ceres, Juno, Pallas and Vesta were reclassified as asteroids. In the summer of 1847, John Russell Hind (1823-1895) discovered what thought was a new planet while working at George Bishop's (1785-1861) private observatory in Regent's Park, London.