It was a wrench for the young wife to let him go so far away, but she bravely, cheerfully made the sacrifice.  She was proud of his work and his ability, and she loved him too truly to stand in the way of his progress.

This journey took him to Scotland, England, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt and Northern Africa.  He interviewed Emperor William I, Bismarck, Victor Emanuel, the then Prince of Wales, now Edward VII of England.  He frequently met Henry M. Stanley, then correspondent for the London papers, who wrote from Paris of Colonel Conwell, “Send that double-sighted Yankee and he will see at a glance all there is and all there ever was.”

He also made the acquaintance of Garibaldi, whom he visited in his island home and with whom he kept up a correspondence after he returned.  Garibaldi it was who called Colonel Conwell’s attention to the heroic deeds of that admirer of America, the great and patriotic Venetian, Daniel Manin.  In the busy years that followed on this trip Colonel Conwell spent a long time gathering materials for a biography of Daniel Manin, and just before it was ready for the press the manuscript was destroyed by fire in the destruction of his home at Newton Centre, Massachusetts, in 1880.  One of his most popular lectures, “The Heroism of a Private Life,” took its inception from the life of this Venetian statesman.

He also gave a series of lectures at Cambridge, England, on Italian history that attracted much favorable comment.

Mr. Samuel T. Harris, of New York, correspondent of the “New York Times” in 1870, in a private letter, says, “Conwell is the funniest chap I ever fell in with.  He sees a thousand things I never thought of looking after.  When his letters come back in print I find lots in them that seems new to me, although I saw it all at the time.  But you don’t see the fun in his letters to the papers.  The way he adapts himself to all circumstances comes from long travel; but it is droll.  He makes a salaam to the defunct kings, a neat bow to the Sudras, and a friendly wink at the Howadji, in a way that puts him cheek-by-jowl with them in a jiffy.  He beats me all out in his positive sympathy with these miserable heathen.  He has read so much that he knows about everything.  The way the officials, English, too, treat him would make you think he was the son of a lord.  He has a dignified condescension in his manner that I can’t imitate.”

Part of the time Bayard Taylor was his traveling companion, and there grew up between these two kindred spirits an intimate friendship that lasted until Taylor’s death.