From the London Spectator.
"We constantly find ourselves recalling the Poet Laureate's modernized Ulysses, the great wanderer, insatiate of new experiences, as we read the story of the octogenarian traveller and his many friends in many lands:
'I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart,
Much have I seen and known. Cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least and honored of them all.'
You see in this book all this and more than this—knowledge of the world, and insatiable thirst for more knowledge of it, great clearness of aim and exact appreciation of the mind's own wants, precise knowledge of the self-sacrifices needed to gratify those wants and a readiness for those sacrifices, a distinct adoption of an economy of life, and steady adherence to it from beginning to end—all of them characteristics which are but rare in this somewhat confused and hand-to-mouth world, and which certainly when combined make a unique study of character, however indirectly it may be presented to us and however little attention may be drawn to the interior of the picture."
From The New York Times.
"His memory was—is, we may say, for he is still alive and in possession of all his faculties—stored with recollections of the most eminent men and women of this century. He has known the intimate friends of Dr. Johnson. He travelled in Albania when Ali Pacha ruled, and has since then explored almost every part of the world, except the far East. He has made eight visits to this country, and at the age of eighty-two (in 1869) he was here again—the guest of Mr. Evarts, and, while in this city, of Mr. Thurlow Weed. Since then he has made a voyage to Jamaica and the West India Islands, and a second visit to Iceland. He was a friend of Sir Walter Scott, Lockhart, Dugald Stewart, Mme. de Staël, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Rogers, Crabbe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Talleyrand, Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Hallam, Mackintosh, Malthus, Erskine, Humboldt, Schlegel, Canova, Sir Humphry Davy, Joanna Baillie, Lord and Lady Holland, and many other distinguished persons whose names would occupy a column. In this country he has known, among other celebrated men, Edward Everett, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, Seward, etc. He was born the same year in which the United States Constitution was ratified. A life extending over such a period, and passed in the most active manner, in the midst of the best society which the world has to offer, must necessarily be full of singular interest; and Sir Henry Holland has fortunately not waited until his memory lost its freshness before recalling some of the incidents in it."