ok by S. Parkes:
"A Chemical Catechism... with copious notes... to which are added a
Vocabulary and a Chapter of Amusing Experiments." [42] And very amusing
they were when Colonel Burton made them. Having studied the book
closely, including the "poetry" with which it is studded, he
manufactured, at vast expense, a few cakes of a nasty-looking and
evil-smelling substance, which, he said, was soap, and ought to be put
on the market. Mrs. Burton intimated that he might put it on the market
or anywhere else as long as he did not make any more. He next, by the
aid of the same manual, prepared a mixture which he called citric acid,
though any other name would have suited it equally well; and of this, as
neither he nor anybody else had any use for it, he daily produced
large quantities. From Naples the family moved to Sorrento, where S'or
Riccardo and S'or Edwardo, as the Italians called them, surrendered
themselves to the natural and legendary influences of the neighbourhood
and to reading. The promontory on which Sorrento stands is barren
enough, but southward rise pleasant cliffs viridescent with samphire,
and beyond them purple hills dotted with white spots of houses. At no
great distance, though hidden from view, stood the classic Paestum, with
its temple to Neptune; and nothing was easier than to imagine, on his
native sea as it were, the shell-borne ocean-god and old Triton blowing
his wreathed horn. Capri, the retreat of Tiberius, was of easy access.
Eastward swept a land of myrtle and lemon orchards. While the elder
Burton was immersed in the melodious Parkes, who sang about "Oxygen,
abandoning the mass," and changing "into gas," his sons played the parts
of Anacreon and Ovid, they crowned their heads with garlands and drank
wine like Anacreon, not omitting the libation, and called to mind the
Ovid of well-nigh two thousand years previous, and his roses of Paestum.
From poetry they turned once more to pistols, again brought their
mother's heart to her mouth, and became generally ungovernable. A visit
to a house of poor reputation having been discovered, their father and
Mr. Du Pre set upon them with horsewhips, whereupon the graceless but
agile youths ran to a neighbouring house and swarmed to the top of a
stack of chimneys, whence partly by word and partly by gesticulation
they arranged terms of peace.

In 1836, the Burtons left for Pau in the South of France; and while
there Richard lost his heart to the daughter of