I am not particularly given to cathedral hunting, nor am I fond of what Forsyth calls "picking the bare bone of antiquity," but when I meet with any thing either beautiful in itself, or which awakens in my mind a pleasing train of ideas, I am apt to give it more than five minutes.
At ---- I met with another traveller, still more decidedly locomotive. He was a very gentlemanly young man, and I think might have been something better, but habit had given his mind a sad twist. I asked him what he thought of the Pyrenees, from whence he had just arrived. He replied that "the roads were very fine;" he had gone nine miles an hour up and down hill. I inquired if he had been at Bagnères de Luchon. "Oh, yes," answered he, "I rode there from Bagnères de Bigorre in six hours." Such seemed to have been the amount of his observations on one of the most beautiful countries of Europe. He was travelling against time.
Many who travel for health, without the command of a very large fortune, lose, I am convinced, as much by the want of those comforts they are accustomed to at home, as they gain by change of air. However, I am equally certain that the mind has far greater power over the body than we generally imagine; and that the mere rapid change of scene and incident acts as powerfully as any medicine in the Pharmacop[oe]ia.
Those who come abroad for economy may certainly now find it either in France or Germany. In almost all parts of Italy they will find themselves deceived. There is one thing, however, to be observed, which is, that English people on the continent do not save by the cheapness of the country only, but they economize by living as foreigners do.
There is another class of travellers who come abroad to procure greater luxuries than they can in England on the same income. I should be sorry to censure a large portion of my countrymen, but I think that those are scarcely excusable, who have neither curiosity nor desire of information, nor limited means, nor ill-health to plead, but who, with sufficient to maintain their rank in society at home, habitually spend their fortune in a foreign country. Their virtue at all events is not patriotism.
Certes he was a most engaging wight, Of social glee and wit humane tho' keen, Turning the night to day and day to night. CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.