educational institutions of western and central
Europe, with a view to his writing an account of them on his return
to St. Petersburg. I accepted his proposal; and in the course of a
few weeks we commenced our tour through Holland and Belgium to
Paris, of which some account will be found in the extracts from my
Journal in the preceding Chapter.

At Paris my Russian friend conceived the idea of attending another
course of lectures on some branch of Roman law at Tubigen. We
parted, but he changed his mind, and instead of attending an
additional course of lectures in a German university, he proceeded
to Rome. A few weeks after my arrival there, I felt a tap on my
shoulder at the dinner table, and, on looking up, I recognized my
young Russian friend, who was already speaking Italian, with as
much fluency as he had spoken English, French, and German, when we
parted at Paris six weeks before.

We renewed our travels together, after having completed our tour of
Rome, with its antiquities and institutions; we proceeded to Naples
by stage, where we spent several days in examining its College of
Nobles and other educational institutions, including its
antiquities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, Vesuvius, etc. In the
College of Nobles we met an American Priest, who was President of
the Roman Catholic College at Georgetown, near Washington, and
invited him to take a seat in our carriage the next day on an
excursion to Herculaneum and Pompeii. In the course of the day a
religious discussion took place between the American Priest and the
Russian, who was very fond of controversy. I took no part in it,
but I thought the Priest had rather the best of it. The result was,
my Russian friend was persuaded to go into a house of retirement
near Rome, and devote some weeks to solitary prayer, fasting, and
meditation. I never afterwards saw him or heard from him for eleven
years, though I remonstrated with him, and wrote him from Florence,
entreating him to reconsider what he was doing; but he said that
what I spoke and wrote rather confirmed him in his course, than
diverted him from it.

When making my third educational tour on the Continent of Europe, I
was, with my daughter, at Munich, in Bavaria, about the beginning
of 1857, and while at dinner at our hotel, I fel