CHAPTER IV 

 SHORT TOUR TO THE EAST 



Giessen Linz Rowboat to Vienna Steam down Danube and over- 

 land to Black Sea Constantinople Smyrna Quarantines at Syra 

 and Trieste Adelsberg Diligence from Milan to Boulogne- 

 Home 



IN the spring of 1840 a passion for travel seized 

 me as if I had been a migratory bird. While 

 attending the lectures at King's College I could see 

 the sails of the lighters moving in sunshine on the 

 Thames, and it required all my efforts to disregard 

 the associations of travel which they aroused. On 

 fine mornings I could not keep still in the house in 

 Spring Gardens where I lived, but wandered in St. 

 James's Park. On these occasions I noticed that the 

 weathercock on the Horse Guards seemed to point 

 nearly always to the south-west. The explanation 

 proved to be that the fit seized me with violence 

 when a south-west wind was blowing. It was 

 arranged by my father that I should accompany Dr. 

 Allen Miller ( 1 8 1 7-1 870), subsequently a great chemist 

 and for many years Treasurer of the Royal Society, 

 to Giessen, where the more promising young chemists 

 of those days gathered to avail themselves of the 

 teaching of Liebig, then the foremost of the chemical 

 Professors in Germany. My father gave me a liberal 

 letter of credit, for, having been a banker himself, he 



