Having two days’ leave, I drove a Gosport gig to Bishopstoke to visit my worthy kinsman, Tom Garnier, Dean of Winchester. When I got back, _Galatea_ had sailed for Lisbon. I was sorry; I wanted to see the place I had heard so much of from my Portuguese schoolfellows, Alvaro Lopes Pereira and Francisco Nunes Vizieu. The only thing they had to give me an idea of the magnificence of Lisbon was an old print of the great earthquake, which looked to me as if the churches and other buildings were on a cruise in the Bay of Biscay. Glanville was promoted from _Tweed_ and appointed to _Pallas_ (Captain Lord Adolphus Fitz-Clarence), likewise of the Channel Squadron. A party of us, Frank Scott, George Wodehouse, and self, got the then famous Ned Neal from London to teach us the noble art of self-defence. We three had lodgings in St. Thomas’s Street; Glanville was an experienced hand, but took an interest in our training: there were many to instruct, and Neal had his hands full. Hands from the dockyard, after work, were rude, pushing us off the pavement. However, science began to tell, but with me the wrong way. Broken nose, upper lip twice cut then, and sewn up. After dark, parties sallied forth from the “Keppel’s Head.” Both sides met at the Mill Dam, a sort of neutral ground where constables could not interfere without writs from both sides. Tandems, too, were equal to the demand; one of us would drive Mr. Neal, others acting as convoy as far as Chichester, and there entertain him. On the whole, our pugilistic meets were conducted quietly; the dockyard maties treated us more respectfully. In addition to self-defence we had lessons in driving. I used to pay half a guinea to Scarlett for being allowed the box-seat, and to hold the heavy heads of seven or eight teams between Portsmouth and London. The whip I learned to handle, but after a couple of stages my arm ached and straightened. As for driving, the horses guided themselves, and stopped of their own accord within an inch of where they had to change.