On his return from Italy to England, he was urged to choose the profession of the law; but his thirst for knowledge, his love of adventure, and his foreign tastes and habits, led him, after a brief apprenticeship, to travel. He left England, with no very definite object, in the summer of 1839, and, accompanied by a friend, visited Russia and other northern countries, and afterward, living some time in Germany and the states on the Danube, made himself master of the German language, and of several of the dialects of Transylvania. From Dalmatia he passed into Montenegro, where he remained a considerable time, assisting an able and active young chief in ameliorating the condition of his semi-barbarous subjects. Travelling through Albania and Romelia, where he met with numerous adventures, he arrived at Constantinople, about the end of 1839. Here he made arrangements for visiting Asia Minor, and other countries in the East, where he spent some years, adopting the costume and leading the life of an Arab of the Desert, and acquiring a thorough knowledge of the manners and languages of Turkey and Arabia. In 1840 or 1841, he transmitted to the Royal Geographical Society, an Itinerary from Constantinople to Aleppo, which does not seem to have been published; but in the eleventh volume of the Journal of that Society, we have an account of the tour which he performed with Mr. Ainsworth, in April, 1840. He travelled in Persia in the same year, and projected a journey for the purpose of examining Susa, and some other places of interest in the Baktyari mountains, to which Major Rawlinson had drawn the attention of the Geographical Society. With this view, he left Ispahan in the middle of September, in company with Schiffeer Khan, a Baktyari chief; and having crossed the highest part of the great chain of Mungasht, he visited the ruins of Manjanik, which are of considerable extent, and resemble those of the Susannian cities. He visited also the ruins in the plain of Mel Amir, and copied some of their cuneiform inscriptions. In crossing the hills to Susan, he was attacked by a tribe of Dinarunis, and robbed of his watch, compass, &c.; but having complained to the chief, and insisted on the return of every missing article, he received back the whole of his property. It had been his practice to traverse these mountains quite alone, and he was never attacked or insulted, except on this occasion, when the country was in a state of war. He found scarcely any remains at Susan to indicate the site of a large city. In 1842 and 1843, he spent a considerable time in the province of Khuistan, an elaborate description of which he communicated through Lord Aberdeen to the Royal Geographical Society. It was during these various journeys that he prepared himself for the great task to which his best and ripest powers were to be devoted. In his wanderings through Asia Minor and Syria he had scarcely left a spot