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CHAPTER IV
SHORT TOUR TO THE EAST

Giessen--Linz-Rowboat to Vienna-Steam down Danube and overland to Black Sea-Constantinople-Smyrna-Quarantines at Syra and Trieste-Adelsberg-Diligence from Milan to BoulogneHome

I N the spring of I84o 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 (1817-1870), subsequently a great chemist and for many years Treasurer of the Royal Society, to Giessen, where the more promising young chemists ')f th()gl days gathCrcd t() 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

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