"'In the expedition to Somali-land, as well as that to the Lake regions of Central Africa, Speke was second in command. In the former, both were severely wounded, and cut their way out of surrounding numbers of natives with singular dash and gallantry, one of the party--Lieutenant Stroyan--being killed. Nor should the wonderful expedition, undertaken alone, to the walled town of Harar, where no European had even been known to penetrate before, be forgotten. On this occasion Captain Burton actually added a grammar and vocabulary of a language to the stores of the philologists. His journey and work on California and the Mormon country preceded that of Mr. Hepworth Dixon. He explored the West Coast of Africa from Bathurst, on the Gambia, to St. Paulo de Loanda in Angola, and the Congo River, visiting the Fans. But his visit to Dahomey was still more important, as he exposed the customs of that blood-stained kingdom, and gave information valuable to humanity as well as to civilization and science. This alone ought to have obtained for him some high honorary distinction; but he got nothing beyond a private expression of satisfaction from the Government then in power. During his four years' Consulship in Brazil his work was simply Herculean. He navigated the river San Francisco fifteen hundred miles in a canoe, visited the gold and diamond mines, crossed the Andes, and explored the Pacific Coast, affording a vast fund of information, political, geographical, and scientific, to the Foreign Office. Next we find him Consul at Damascus, where he did good work in raising English influence and credit. Here he narrowly escaped assassination, receiving a severe wound. He explored Syria, Palestine, and the Holy Land, protected the Christian population from a massacre, and was recalled by the effete Liberal Government because he was too good a man, Damascus being reduced to a Vice-Consulate in accordance with their policy of effacement. He is now shelved at Trieste, but has still managed to embellish his stay here by some valuable antiquarian discoveries.