In 1832, Mr Roby visited the English lakes, and recorded his impressions in lively sketches both with pen and pencil.  In the spring of 1837, he made a rapid tour on the Continent, the notes and illustrative sketches of which were published in two volumes, under the title of Seven Weeks in Belgium, Switzerland, Lombardy, Piedmont, Savoy, &c. In 1840, Mr Roby again visited the Continent by a different route, making notes and sketches of what he saw.  At the close of the year, he was engaged in preparing a new edition of the “Traditions,” in a less expensive form.  It was published in three volumes, as the first of a series of Popular Traditions of England; his intention being to follow up those of Lancashire with similar legends of Yorkshire, for which he wrote a few tales, which appeared in Blackwood’s and Eraser’s Magazines.

The principal literary occupation of the next four years appears to have been the preparation and delivery of lectures on various subjects in connection with literary and mechanics’ institutions.  In 1844, his health gave way, and for years he suffered severely.  As a last resource he tried the water-cure at Malvern in the spring of 1847, and with complete success.  In the summer of 1849, he again married—­the lady who survived him, and to whose “sketch of his life” we are largely indebted in this brief memoir.  In the two short years following this marriage—­the two last of his life—­he was busily engaged in writing and delivering lectures, visiting places which form the scenes of some of his latest legends, and in the composition of a series of tales intended to illustrate the influence of Christianity in successive periods, a century apart.  Deferring that for the fourth century, he wrote six, bringing the series down to the close of the seventh century; when he determined on visiting Scotland.  With his wife and daughter he embarked at Liverpool on board the steamer Orion for Glasgow, which ill-fated vessel struck on some rocks about one o’clock in the morning of the 18th June 1850, and went down.  Mrs and Miss Roby were rescued after having been some time in the water, but of the husband and father only the corpse was recovered, and his remains were laid in his family grave in the burial-ground of the Independent Chapel, Rochdale, on Saturday, the 22d of that month.

Mr Roby was not more remarkable for his numerous and varied talents than for his warm and affectionate heart, rich imagination, great love of humour, and deep and earnest piety.  He was a facile versifier, an elegant prose writer, an able botanist and physiologist.  Possessing a fine ear, rich voice, and great musical taste, he not only took his vocal share in part-song, but wrote several melodies, which have been published.  In one species of rapid mental calculation, or rather combination of figures—­giving in an instant the sum of a double column of twenty figures in each row, or a square of six figures—­he far excelled Bidder, the calculating boy.  He was a