Obituary Notices. 
xliii 
recollections of his stay there. It also proved of the utmost benefit 
to him; for in the spring of 1852, after visiting Malta, he returned 
home, through Italy and Germany, perfectly restored to health. 
This was his first experience of foreign travel, and the love which he 
then imbibed for it never deserted him. Some part of every year 
was passed abroad ; and as we glance through the many bulky 
volumes which contain the record of all his wanderings, it can easily 
be seen how much he enjoyed travelling. Many of the incidents 
which they contain are very amusing, and some of great interest. 
It may not be out of place to transcribe here an account which he 
gives of a scene which occurred on a Spanish lugger, dirty beyond 
all description, as Spanish luggers were, in which he crossed from 
Tangiers to Gibraltar, as it shows, in spite of the inconvenience and 
discomfort which he had to put up with, the keen sense of the 
ludicrous which he always possessed. “ As the sun rose,” he says, 
“ all the cocks — and there were dozens — in our coops began to crow 
lustily, and those whose freedom enabled them clapped their wings 
with joy. It is curious, but probably an electric influence, which 
thus compels cocks to crow when they feel the sun. These birds 
all crew, and yet some of them were so uncomfortably situated that 
it defied me to understand what pleasure they could have in the 
act. Some were standing on their heads, or rather necks, with their 
long red eyelids winking on the deck ; others on their backs 
formed the pedestals of innumerable feet, the bodies belonging to 
which were again the points of support of another living layer. 
Placed in every imaginable posture and ungraceful attitude, cramped 
and crushed to the utmost limits of endurance, and many in the 
centre totally excluded from a ray of light, these gallant trumpeters 
sounded their peal of joy as if they exulted in the thought that the 
time of their liberation was drawing near. At times the first note, 
which was delivered with emphasis, seemed as if it comprised the 
utmost exertion of which its author was capable ; the succeeding 
prolongation, on which the whole effect depended, being wholly 
wanting, or dwindling down into an insignificant rattle. At other 
times a bravura was expelled in short, disjointed, but determined 
accents, as if the taste of the performer had led him to execute it 
in staccato, while every now and then some poor aspirant in the 
centre of the crowd, vainly endeavouring to balance himself on 
