THE EUROPEAN JOURNALS l8l 



body wearied beyond all calculation; yet it has to be 

 done ; those who have my interests at heart tell me I must 

 not refuse a single invitation. 



December 11, Monday. Though I awoke feeling much 

 depressed, my dull feelings were soon dissipated by letters 

 from my sweet wife and sons. What joy to know them well 

 and happy on the 14th and 27th of September. My day 

 was a busy one, and at seven I went to Mr. Lizars', having 

 engaged to go with him to the Antiquarian Society, where 

 I met many of my friends, saw a gun-barrel and other 

 things that had belonged to the Spanish Armada, and heard 

 a curious and interesting account of that vast fleet read by 

 Dr. Hibbert, and saw the Scottish antiquities belonging to 

 the society. 



Tuesday, December 12. This morning at ten I went to 

 the house of Dr. Brewster, whom I found writing in a large 

 room with several fine pictures on the walls. He re- 

 ceived me very kindly, and in a few minutes I began 

 reading, my paper on the habits of the Carrion Crow, 

 Vultur atratus. About midway my nervousness affected 

 my respiration ; I paused a moment, and he was good 

 enough to say it was highly interesting. I resumed, and 

 went on to the end, much to my relief. He who has been 

 brought up an auctioneer, or on the boards of some 

 theatre, with all the knowledge of the proper usage of the 

 voice, and all the aplomb such a life would give, knows 

 nothing of the feelings of bashfulness which agitated me, a 

 man who never looked into an English grammar and who 

 has forgotten most of what he learned in French and 

 Spanish ones — a man who has always felt awkward and 

 shy in the presence of a stranger — a man habituated to 

 ramble alone, with his thoughts usually bent on the 

 beauties of Nature herself — this man, me, to be seated 

 opposite Dr. Brewster in Edinburgh, reading one of my 

 puny efforts at describing habits of birds that none but 

 an Almighty Creator can ever know, was ridiculously ab- 



