promising family, who revered their father, we believe he enjoyed as
much happiness as usually falls to the lot of humanity.

One only drawback there was to the favour in which he stood with the
pacha: the doctor was obliged, when attending the high ladies of the
court, to drink in their presence one-half of every drug he
prescribed--a custom it might not be amiss to introduce into England,
although not with the view, as in Tripoli, of guarding against poison!
Dr Dickson also acted as consul for Portugal, although for many years
he received no salary: at last, on paying a flying visit to London,
two years before his death, he was recommended to go home by Lisbon to
seek redress. He found, however, that amid the clash of political
factions, justice was difficult to be found, and so he gave up both
the search and the post.

The estimation in which Dr Dickson was held at Tripoli, both by the
English residents and native population, cannot be better described
than by quoting entire a paragraph from a London newspaper, which
inserted a notice of his death in the year 1847: 'Letters from
Tripoli, just received, announce the death, on the 27th February,
after only four days' illness, of Dr John Dickson, a half-pay surgeon
of the British navy, who had been upwards of thirty years a resident
at Tripoli, and where, such was the extent of his gratuitous
attendance on the indigent, that the mournful event cannot but be
looked upon as a great public calamity; and happening as it did, at
the very instant the first gun announced the anniversary of the birth
of the Prophet, not a few of the Mohammedans regarded the event with a
superstitious awe. On the 1st of March, the remains of the lamented
deceased were interred in the Protestant cemetery, which is distant
about two miles from the town, escorted by a military guard of honour,