like a horse,
therefore was rejoiced when the admiral proposed we should leave it.
Before we went away, a fellow, apparently an Armenian, came up and
said he had a handsome young Greek girl for sale if we would like to
see her. As, however, none of us under any circumstances could have
purchased her, we declined his offer....

* * * * *

A characteristic feature of Maitland's diary is his constant reference
to his wife. He had married, in 1804, Catherine, second daughter of
Daniel Connor of Ballybricken, County Cork. They had only one child,
who died in infancy. Maitland loved his wife with lifelong devotion;
wherever the service called him, her picture hung in his cabin, and he
carried her image in his heart. Every letter she wrote to him is noted
in his journal; and it is full of references to her in words of
devoted attachment. Thus on the voyage home from South America in 1820
he writes: "Crossed the equator at eleven o'clock at night, and we are
once more, Heaven be praised, in the northern hemisphere, which
contains all I love and delight in in this world, and every mile we go
draws us nearer to the sole mistress and possessor of my heart.... A
more affectionate, kind, attached wife no man on earth is blessed with
than myself." He was bitterly disappointed when from Lisbon he was
ordered to the Mediterranean. As the ship passed Gibraltar he wrote:
"This was the day I had settled in my own mind that I was to arrive at
Portsmouth, and there meet the dearest and best of wives.... I had
expected this day to be the happiest of human beings, and now the
event that would make me so appears as distant as ever." When he was
at Naples, Mrs Maitland appears to have fallen under religious
influences of the kind which often embitter family relations; and it
is pathetic to read the expression of her husband's grief and anxiety
lest the love which was the chief joy of his life should be estranged.
"I fear much," he writes, "I shall have to regret the longest day I
have to live, having left her in Scotland, instead of taking her
abroad with me, as she was in a nest of fanatical foolish women who
have the madness to believe they are inspired from above." Happily the
cloud soon passed, and he notes the receipt of "one of her own dear
affectionate kind letters, such as she used formerly to write." A
little later comes the joyful entry: "Bore up and made sail, with a
fine strong Levant wind, which cl