CHAPTER II.
GREAT BRITAIN SIXTY YEARS AGO _Wordsworth--Dickens--The Land of Burns, etc_.
The year after leaving college I made a visit to Europe, which, in those days, was a notable event.

As the stormy Atlantic had not yet been carpeted by six-day steamers, I crossed in a fine new packet-ship, the "Patrick Henry," of the Grinnell & Minturn Line.

Captain Joseph C.
Delano was a gentleman of high intelligence and culture who, after he had abandoned salt water, became an active member of the American Association of Science.

After twenty-one days under canvas and the instructions of the captain, I learned more of nautical affairs and of the ocean and its ways than in a dozen subsequent passages in the steamships.
On the second morning after our arrival in Liverpool I breakfasted with that eminent clergyman, Dr.Raffles, who boasted the possession of one of the finest collections of autographs in England.

He showed me the signature of John Bunyan; the original manuscript of one of Sir Walter Scott's novels; the original of Burns' poem addressed to the parasite on a lady's bonnet, which contained the famous lines: "Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see our sel's as others see us," besides several other manuscripts by the same poet, and also the autograph of a challenge sent by Byron to Lord Brougham for alleged insult, a fact to which no reference has been made in Byron's biography.
From Liverpool, with my friends Professor Renwick and Professor Cuningham, I set out on a journey to the lakes of England.