The story of my first visit to Europe is briefly this:  my object was to study the medical profession, chiefly in Paris, and I was in Europe about two years and a half, from April, 1833, to October, 1835.  I sailed in the packet ship Philadelphia from New York for Portsmouth, where we arrived after a passage of twenty-four days.  A week was spent in visiting Southampton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Wilton, and the Isle of Wight.  I then crossed the Channel to Havre, from which I went to Paris.  In the spring and summer of 1834 I made my principal visit to England and Scotland.  There were other excursions to the Rhine and to Holland, to Switzerland and to Italy, but of these I need say nothing here.  I returned in the packet ship Utica, sailing from Havre, and reaching New York after a passage of forty-two days.

A few notes from my recollections will serve to recall the period of my first visit to Europe, and form a natural introduction to the experiences of my second.  I take those circumstances which happen to suggest themselves.

After a short excursion to Strasbourg, down the Rhine, and through Holland, a small steamer took us from Rotterdam across the Channel, and we found ourselves in the British capital.

The great sight in London is—­London.  No man understands himself as an infinitesimal until he has been a drop in that ocean, a grain of sand on that sea-margin, a mote in its sunbeam, or the fog or smoke which stands for it; in plainer phrase, a unit among its millions.

I had two letters to persons in England:  one to kind and worthy Mr. Petty Vaughan, who asked me to dinner; one to pleasant Mr. William Clift, conservator of the Hunterian Museum, who asked me to tea.

To Westminster Abbey.  What a pity it could not borrow from Paris the towers of Notre Dame!  But the glory of its interior made up for this shortcoming.  Among the monuments, one to Rear Admiral Charles Holmes, a descendant, perhaps, of another namesake, immortalized by Dryden in the “Annus Mirabilis” as

  “the Achates of the general’s fight.”

He accompanied Wolfe in his expedition which resulted in the capture of Quebec.  My relative, I will take it for granted, as I find him in Westminster Abbey.  Blood is thicker than water,—­and warmer than marble, I said to myself, as I laid my hand on the cold stone image of the once famous Admiral.

To the Tower, to see the lions,—­of all sorts.  There I found a “poor relation,” who made my acquaintance without introduction.  A large baboon, or ape,—­some creature of that family,—­was sitting at the open door of his cage, when I gave him offence by approaching too near and inspecting him too narrowly.  He made a spring at me, and if the keeper had not pulled me back would have treated me unhandsomely, like a quadrumanous rough, as he was.  He succeeded in stripping my waistcoat of its buttons, as one would strip a pea-pod of its peas.

To Vauxhall Gardens.  All Americans went there in those days, as they go to Madame Tussaud’s in these times.  There were fireworks and an exhibition of polar scenery.  “Mr. Collins, the English PAGANINI,” treated us to music on his violin.  A comic singer gave us a song, of which I remember the line,