Where every thing appears to me to be just like England, at least just
by it; and in fact four and twenty hours would carry us thither with a
fair wind: and now it really does feel as if the journey were over; and
even in that sensation, though there is some pleasure, there is some
pain too;--the time and the places are past;--and I have only left to
wish, that my improvements of the one, and my accounts of the others,
were better; for though Mr. Sherlock comforts his followers with the kind
assertion, That if a hundred men of parts travelled over Italy, and each
made a separate book of what _he_ saw and observed, a hundred excellent
compositions might be made, of which no two should be alike, yet all new,
all resembling the original, and all admirable of their kind.--One’s
constantly-recurring fear is, lest the readers should cry out, with
Juliet--
Yea, but all this did I know before!
How truly might they say so, did I mention the oddity (for oddity it
still is) in this town of Lille, to see dogs drawing in carts as beasts
of burden, and lying down in the market-place when their work is done,
to gnaw the bones thrown them by their drivers: they are of mastiff race
seemingly, crossed by the bull-dog, yet not quarrelsome at all. This is
a very awkward and barbarous practice however, and, as far as I know,
confined to this city; for in all others, people seem to have found out,
that horses, asses, and oxen are the proper creatures to draw wheel
carriages--except indeed at Vienna, where the streets are so very narrow,
that the men resolve rather to be harnessed than run over.
How fine I thought these churches thirteen years ago, comes now thirteen
times a-day into my head; they are not fine at all; but it was the first
time I had ever crossed the channel, and I thought every thing a wonder,
and fancied we were arrived at the world’s end almost; so differently
do the self-same places appear to the self-same people surrounded by
different circumstances! I now feel as if we were at Canterbury. Was one
to go to Egypt, the sight of Naples on the return home would probably
afford a like sensation of proximity: and I recollect, one of the
gentlemen who had been with Admiral Anson round the world told us, that
when he came back as near as our East India settlements, he considered
the voyage as finished, and all his toils at an end--so is my little
book; and (if Italy may be considered, upon Sherlock’s principle, as
a sort of academy-figure set up for us all to draw from) my design of
it may have a chance to go in the portfolio with the rest, after its
exhibition-day is over.
With regard to the general effect travelling has upon the human mind,
it is different with different people. Brydone has observed, that the
magnetic needle loses her habits upon the heights of Ætna, nor ever more
regains her partiality for the _north_, till again newly touched by the
loadstone: it is so with many men who have lived long from home; they
find, like Imogen,
That there’s living out of Britain;
and if they return to it after an absence of several years, bring back
with them an alienated mind--this is not well. Others there are, who,
being accustomed to live a considerable time in places where they have
not the smallest intention to fix for ever, but on the contrary firmly
resolve to leave _sometime_, learn to treat the world as a man treats
his mistress, whom he likes well enough, but has no design to marry, and
of course never provides for--this is not well neither. A third set gain
the love of hurrying perpetually from place to place; living familiarly
with all, but intimately with none; till confounding their own ideas
(still undisclosed) of right and wrong, they learn to think virtue and
vice ambulatory, as Browne says; profess that climate and constitution
regulate men’s actions, till they try to persuade their companions into
a belief most welcome to themselves, that the will of God in one place
is by no means his will in another; and most resemble in their whirling
fancies a boy’s top I once saw shewn by a professor who read us a lecture
upon opticks; it was painted in regular stripes round like a narrow
ribbon, red, blue, green, and yellow; we set it a-spinning by direction
of our philosopher, who, whipping it merrily about, obtained as a
general effect the total privation of all the four colours, so distinct
at the beginning of its _tour_;--_it resembled a dirty white!_
With these reflexions and recollections we drove forward to Calais, where
I left the following lines at our inn:
Over mountains, rivers, vallies,
Here are we return’d to Calais;
After all their taunts and malice,
Ent’ring safe the gates of Calais;
While, constrain’d, our captain dallies,
Waiting for a wind at Calais,
Muse! prepare some sprightly sallies
To divert _ennui_ at Calais.
Turkish ships, Venetian gallies,
Have we seen since last at Calais;
But tho’ Hogarth (rogue who rallies!)
Ridicules the French at Calais,
We, who’ve walk’d o’er many a palace,
Quite well content return to Calais;
For, striking honestly the tallies,
There’s little choice ’twixt them and Calais.
It would have been graceless not to give these lines a companion on the
other side the water, like Dean Swift’s distich before and after he
climbed Penmanmaur: these verses were therefore written, and I believe
still remain, in an apartment of the Ship inn:
He whom fair winds have wafted over,
First hails his native land at Dover,
And doubts not but he shall discover
Pleasure in ev’ry path round Dover;
Envies the happy crows which hover
About old Shakespeare’s cliff at Dover;
Nor once reflects that each young rover
Feels just the same, return’d to Dover.
From this fond dream he’ll soon recover
When debts shall drive him back to Dover,
Hoping, though poor, to live in clover,
Once safely past the straits of Dover.
But he alone’s his country’s lover,
Who, absent long, returns to Dover,
And can by fair experience prove her
The best he has found since last at Dover.