and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we
shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions,
or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on
cow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be
disparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean
contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen
(getting ready for the gentleman in the parlour). _Procul, O procul
este profani!_ These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be
treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts
hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk; or if I must have the
integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger
than a friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and
place; he is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a
Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do
not even try to sympathise with him, and he breaks no squares. (How I
love to see the camps of the gypsies, and to sigh my soul into that sort
of life. If I express this feeling to another, he may qualify and
spoil it with some objection.) I associate nothing with my travelling
companion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of me
and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one
of other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction
of the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary
character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation that gives
a hint of your profession and pursuits; or from having some one with
you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems that
other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world; but your
'unhoused free condition is put into circumspection and confine.' The
incognito of an inn is one of its striking privileges--'lord of one's
self, uncumbered with a name.' Oh! it is great to shake off the trammels
of the world and of public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting,
everlasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the
creature of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universe
only by a dish of sweetbreads, and to owe nothing but the score of the
evening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt,
to be known by no other title than _the Gentleman in the parlour!_
One may take one's choice of all characters in this romantic state
of uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely
respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and
disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to be
objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those
hackneyed common-places that we appear in the world; an inn restores us
to the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I have certainly
spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I have been left
entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some metaphysical problem,
as once at Witham Common, where I found out the proof that likeness is
not a case of the association of ideas--at other times, when there have
been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's (I think it was), where
I first met with Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons, into which I
entered at once, and at a little inn on the borders of Wales, where
there happened to be hanging some of Westall's drawings, which I
compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the admired
artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn,
standing up in a boat between me and the twilight--at other times I
might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest in
this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read _Paul and
Virginia,_ which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being
drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two
volumes of Madame D'Arblay's _Camilla._ It was on the 10th of April
1798 that I sat down to a volume of the _New Eloise,_ at the inn at
Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I
chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he first
caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which
I had brought with me as a _bon bouche_ to crown the evening with. It
was my birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place in the
neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollen
turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain point
you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre,
broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with 'green
upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks' below, and the river
Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at this
time 'glittered green with sunny showers,' and a budding ash-tree dipped
its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was
to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious prospect,
repeating the lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's poems!
But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another also
opened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written,
in letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, LIBERTY,
GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE; which have since faded into the light of common
day, or mock my idle gaze.
The beautiful is vanished, and returns not.
Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot; but I
would return to it alone. What other self could I find to share that
influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the fragments of which I
could hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been broken and
defaced. I could stand on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice of
years that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going
shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now? Not
only I myself have changed; the world, which was then new to me, has
become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O
sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou then wert; and thou
shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink of the
waters of life freely!
There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness or
capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. With change
of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can by
an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes,
and then the picture of the mind revives again; but we forget those
that we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place at
a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we
paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other.
We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The
landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill of it,
and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We
pass on, and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts it from our
sight also blots it from our memory like a dream. In travelling through
a wild barren country I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one.
It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see
of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despise
the country. 'Beyond Hyde Park,' says Sir Topling Flutter, 'all is a
desert.' All that part of the map that we do not see before us is blank.
The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It is
not one prospect expanded into another, county joined to county, kingdom
to kingdom, land to seas, making an image voluminous and vast; the mind
can form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a
single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation of
arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense
mass of territory and population known by the name of China to us? An
inch of pasteboard on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China
orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at a
distance are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure the
universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our being only
piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and
places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great
variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls
another, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to renew
old recollections, we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our
existence; we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a
place where we have formerly lived, and with which we have intimate
associations, every one must have found that the feeling grows more
vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the
actual impression: we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces,
names that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all the
rest of the world is forgotten!--To return to the question I have
quitted above:
I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in company
with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the former reason
reversed. They are intelligible matters, and will bear talking about.
The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury
Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion
antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party
of pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to: in
taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the
way. 'The mind is its own place'; nor are we anxious to arrive at the
end of our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well to
works of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean
eclat--showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance,