In 1805 John Bell married Rosina Congleton, daughter of a retired Edinburgh physician, and in her found congeniality of tastes, an appreciation of the artistic, literary, and musical sides of his nature, and admirable assistance in his propensity for exercising hospitality. His entertainments, and his own performances on the trombone, became celebrated. His taste for art was accompanied by remarkable skill in design and execution, in which he was only excelled among surgeons by his own brother Charles. He never, however, felt quite at ease after his exclusion from the infirmary. His rivals occupying their position of authority, Dr. Gregory in perpetual sway, could not but impress him with a sense of undeserved failure. Early in 1816 he was thrown from his horse, and did not recover rapidly from his injuries. In 1817 his health was so much impaired that he went on a foreign tour with his wife, and his last three years were spent in Italy, where his artist soul found great delight, and where he also, had much professional practice among English visitors to Italy. During his residence in Italy he was well aware of the dangerous condition of his health, but his singular degree of spirit and ardour of character prevented his ever betraying his consciousness of it. A few pencilled lines, written by him before leaving Paris, express well the inmost heart of the man whose career had presented such outward turbulence. He says: “I have seen much of the disappointments of life. I shall not feel them long. Sickness, in an awful and sudden form; loss of blood, in which I lay sinking for many hours, with the feeling of death long protracted, when I felt how painful it was not to come quite to life, yet not to die—a clamorous dream! tell that in no long time that must happen, which was lately so near.” He died of dropsy, at Rome, on April 15, 1820. In Florence and Rome he visited all the principal galleries, and took pencil notes of his observations, both from a scientific and artistic point of view. These formed the main bulk of his posthumous “Observations on Italy,” edited by his friend, Bishop Sandford of Edinburgh, published in quarto form in 1825, subsequently in 2 vols. 8vo in 1835, with additional chapters on Naples. On their publication they at once took high rank, from their singular combination of artistic sympathies, literary expression, and scientific criticism. The _New Monthly Review_, on its first page, described the language of these observations as vigorous, terse and pure; his lights and shadows as disposed with a masterly hand. His descriptions both of landscapes and of manners in Italy are referred to as the most fascinating that had yet appeared. As a specimen of this vivid and picturesque style, showing how much his art was aided by that quickness to perceive characteristic expressions and traits which was so trained by his medical experience, we may quote his account of a Lenten preacher whom he heard at Rome.