I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her
shel was turned eftsoones into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a
stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country
is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is
faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can,
not where he would.--LYLY’S EUPHUES.
I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange
characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and
made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of
my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument
of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my
observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the
surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous
in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had
been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages,
and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and
customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed
one long summer’s day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence I
stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished
to find how vast a globe I inhabited.
This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages
and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I
neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would
I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting
ships, bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze
after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends
of the earth!
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination
into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I
visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover
of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere
its gratification, for on no country had the charms of nature been more
prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, her oceans of liquid silver; her
mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with
wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes;
her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep
rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests,
where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling
with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;--no, never need
an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of
natural scenery.
But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical
association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the
refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities
of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful
promise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very
ruins told the history of the times gone by, and every mouldering
stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned
achievement--to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to
loiter about the ruined castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to
escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and
lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the
earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has
an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been
almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there
is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one,
particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great
men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that
all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great
man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man
of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in
this idea I was confirmed by observing the comparative importance and
swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I was
assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit this
land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am
degenerated.
It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion
gratified. I have wandered through different countries and witnessed
many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied
them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze
with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window
of one print-shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of
beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by
the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists
to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with
sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my
friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have
taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at finding how
my idle humor has led me astray from the great object studied by every
regular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal
disappointment with an unlucky landscape-painter, who had travelled on
the Continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had
sketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketch-book was
accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins;
but he had neglected to paint St. Peter’s, or the Coliseum, the cascade
of Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not a single glacier or volcano
in his whole collection.