He was utterly unassuming, and good-natured in his manner, and when seen in his ordinary black habiliments looked more like a well-to-do Jewish trader than anything else.
As for the social aspects of these Scientific Congresses, they were becoming every year more festive, and, at all events to the ignoramus outsiders who joined them, more pleasant.

My good cousin and old friend, then Colonel, now General, Sir Charles Trollope, was at Venice that autumn.

I said on meeting him, "Now the first thing is to, make you a member." "Me! a member of a Scientific Congress!" said he.

"God bless you! I am as ignorant as a babe of all possible 'epteras and 'opteras, and 'statics and 'matics!" "Oh! nonsense! we are all men of science here! Come along!"-- _i.e._, to the ducal palace to be inscribed.

"But what do you mean to tell them I am ?" he asked.