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FOREIGN TRAVEL.

It was in a splenetic humor that I sat me down to my scanty fare at TERRACINA; and how long I should have contemplated the lean thrushes in array before me I cannot say, if a cloud of smoke, that drew the tears into my eyes, had not burst from the green and leafy boughs on the hearth-stone. "Why," I exclaimed, starting up from the table, "why did I leave my own chimney-corner ? — But am I not on the road to BRUNDUSIUM? And are not these the very calamities that befell HORACE and VIRGIL, and MECENAS, and PLOTIUS, and VARIUS? HORACE laughed at them.—Then why should not I? HORACE resolved to turn them to account; and VIRGIL cannot we hear him observing that to remember them will, by and by, be a pleasure?" My soliloquy reconciled me at once to my fate; and when for the twentieth time I had looked through the window on a sea sparkling with innumerable brilliants, a sea on which the heroes of the Odyssey and the Æneid had sailed, I sat down as to a splendid banquet. My thrushes had the flavor of ortolans; and I ate with an appetite I had not known before. "Who," I cried, as I poured out my last glass of Falernian (for Falernian it was said to be, and in my eyes it ran bright and clear as a topaz-stone), "who would remain at home, could he do otherwise? Who would submit to tread that dull but daily round, his hours forgotten as soon as spent?" and, opening my journal-book and dipping my pen in my ink-horn, I determined, as far as I could, to justify myself and my countrymen in wandering over the face of the earth. "It may serve me," said I, as a remedy in some future fit of the spleen."

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Ours is a nation of travellers; 274 and no wonder, when the elements, air, water and fire, attend at our bidding, to transport us from shore to shore; when the ship rushes into the deep, her track the foam as of some mighty torrent; and, in three hours, or less, we stand gazing and gazed at among a foreign people. None want an excuse. If rich, they go to enjoy; if poor, to retrench; if sick, to recover; if studious, to learn; if learned, to relax from their studies. But, whatever they may say and whatever they may believe, they go for the most part on the same errand; nor will those who reflect think that errand an idle one.

Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures, so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood.

Now travel, and foreign travel more particularly, restores to us in a great degree what we have lost. When the anchor is heaved, we double down the leaf; and for a while at least all is over. The old cares are left clustering round the old objects; and, at every step, as we proceed, the slightest circumstance amuses and interests. All is new and strange. We surrender ourselves, and feel once again as children. Like them, we enjoy eagerly; like them, when we fret we fret only for the moment; and here, indeed, the resemblance is very remarkable; for, if a journey has its pains as well as its pleasures (and there is nothing unmixed

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in this world) the pains are no sooner over than they are forgotten, while the pleasures live long in the memory.

Nor is it surely without another advantage. If life be short, not so to many of us are its days and its hours. When the blood slumbers in the veins, how often do we wish that the earth would turn faster on its axis, that the sun would rise and set before it does! and, to escape from the weight of time, how many follies, how many crimes, are committed! Men rush on danger, and even on death. Intrigue, play, foreign and domestic broil, such are their resources; and, when these things fail, they destroy themselves.

Now, in travelling we multiply events, and innocently. We set out, as it were, on our adventures; and many are those that occur to us, morning, noon and night. The day we come to a place which we have long heard and read of, and in ITALY we do so continually, it is an era in our lives; and from that moment the very name calls up a picture. How delightfully, too, does the knowledge flow in upon us, and how fast! 276 Would he who sat in a corner of his library, poring over books and maps, learn more or so much in the time as he who, with his eyes and his heart open, is receiving impressions all day long from the things themselves? How accurately do they arrange themselves in our memory, towns, rivers, mountains; and in what living colors do we recall the dresses, manners and customs, of the people! Our sight is the noblest of all our senses. "It fills the mind with the most ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues longest in action without being tired." Our sight is on the alert when we travel; and its exercise is then so delightful that we forget the profit in the pleasure.

Like a river, that gathers, that refines as it runs, like a spring that takes its course through some rich vein of mineral, we improve and imperceptibly—nor in the head only, but in the heart. Our prejudices leave us, one by one. Seas and mountains are no longer our boundaries. We learn to love, and esteem, and admire beyond them. Our benevolence extends itself with our knowledge. And must we not return better citizens than we went? For, the more we become acquainted with the institutions of other countries, the more highly must we value our own.

I threw down my pen in triumph. "The question," said I, "is set to rest forever. And yet—”

"And yet

I must still say.

278 The WISEST OF MEN seldom went out of the walls of ATHENS; and for that worst of evils, that sickness of the soul, to which we are most liable when most at our ease, is there not, after all, a surer and yet pleasanter remedy, a remedy for which we have only to cross the threshold? A PIEDMONTESE nobleman, into whose company I fell at TURIN, had not long before experienced its efficacy; and his story he told me without

reserve.

"I was weary of life," said he, "and, after a day such as few have known and none would wish to remember, was hurrying along the street to the river, when I felt a sudden check. I turned and beheld a little boy, who had caught the skirt of my cloak in his anxiety to solicit my notice. His look and manner were irresistible. Not less so was the lesson he had learnt. 'There are six of us, and we are dying for want of food.'-'Why should I not,' said I to myself, 'relieve this wretched family? I have the means;

and it will not delay me many minutes. But what if it does?' The scene of misery he conducted me to I cannot describe. I threw them my purse; and their burst of gratitude overcame me. It filled my eyes . . it went as a cordial to my heart. 'I will call again to-morrow,' I cried. 'Fool that I was, to think of leaving a world, where such pleasure was to be had, and so cheaply!""

THE FOUNTAIN.

It was a well

Of whitest marble, white as from the quarry;
And richly wrought with many a high relief,
Greek sculpture-in some earlier day perhaps
A tomb, and honored with a hero's ashes.
The water from the rock filled and o’erflowed;
Then dashed away, playing the prodigal,
And soon was lost-stealing unseen, unheard,
Through the long grass, and round the twisted roots
Of aged trees; discovering where it ran
By the fresh verdure. Overcome with heat,
I threw me down; admiring, as I lay,
That shady nook, a singing place for birds,
That grove so intricate, so full of flowers,
More than enough to please a child a-Maying.
The sun had set, a distant convent-bell
Ringing the Angelus; and now approached
The hour for stir and village-gossip there,
The hour REBEKAH came, when from the well
She drew with such alacrity to serve
The stranger and his camels. Soon I heard

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