Dear Old Darwin

I will send you the name of the grass anon: it is gone to Genl. Munros.¹

Wheatstone told me that you have the Prussian order of merit;² the only scientific distinction of the kind that I ever thought worth a fig— My dear old friend I do rejoice from the bottom of my heart & congratulate Mrs Darwin & your family a thousand thousand times   I rejoice out of love for you & yours, & I rejoice out of hate to the French Academy, who will now feel confoundedly small.³ I thought it almost too good news to be true when I heard it.

I went to the Handel festival yesterday & heard the Messiah—⁴ It reminded me of the organ at Oxford,⁵ for several of the choruses went “up & down my back” & the Hallelujah was tremendous   I never heard such music. & yet I had disappointments, the acoustics of the building are irremediably bad.— the finest solos were contemptible compared with the unsurpassable grandeur of the Chorus music. & “The Trumpet shall sound” grievously disappointed me, I expected a blast that was to wake the dead, & make my flesh creep off my bones, & leave me an unaffined skeleton—whereas the delicate trumpet solo, however beautiful, was too small a voice altogether— I had a musical companion with me, who kindly interpreted all with the score, & I avow I was “greatly awakened”,—I had always believed I would rather have been a great composer than any thing else, & I shall now die in that belief.

I was at dear old Ward’s funeral on Wednesday.⁶

My wife is making a capital recovery, & baby is all right.⁷

Ever my dear “eques bene meritus”⁸ | Your admiring & affect | J D Hooker.

I sent D. of Argyll last week.⁹