An auto-biographical memoir of Sir John Barrow, bart., late of the Admiralty, including reflections, observations and reminiscences, at home and abroad. From early life to advanced age / [Sir John Barrow].

  • Barrow, John, Sir, 1764-1848.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An auto-biographical memoir of Sir John Barrow, bart., late of the Admiralty, including reflections, observations and reminiscences, at home and abroad. From early life to advanced age / [Sir John Barrow]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by affording the opportunity of recalling to my memory the youthful companions of early days, and the friends of maturer age, together with the many agreeable associations that crowd into such _ recol- lections. If an excuse were wanting for this volume, it might be suggested that, as the lives of so many excellent characters have passed under my review, it ss but reasonable that I should take a review of my own, though less distinguished; and I promise it shall be a true and a faithful one. Long as my life has been spared, it has passed away in a state of what I may call uninterrupted health— in the full enjoyment of activity of body, and sanity of mind—mens sana in corpore sano; and, by the mercy of Providence, I have never had occasion to call in the aid of the doctor but once, and he was a Chinese, practising in the city of Ting-hae, in the island of Chu-san. A great portion of the first forty years of my life was spent in rambling among the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, or angling for trout in the mountain-streams; in sea-voyages, or In pedestrian exercises in foreign countries: the next forty years mostly at Charing-Cross, in close confinement for the greater part of the day, and in such sedentary exercise of the mind, as is required of a Secretary of the Admiralty; whose talent may, perhaps, be esti- mated by some, who know little about it, to lie more in the hand than the head. I may lay claim, how- ever, to some small portion of mental exercise, in