ircumscribed our view. With inexorable complaisance he insisted on scorting us to every spot marked out in our morning's plan, though he confessed they did not deserve so much pains; and as to William Tell, he laboured both long and learnedly to convince us that the adventures of that worthy were at least half fabulous; that it was probable he never slew Gesler at all; that if he did slay Gesler, there was not so much merit in the affair as people imagined; and that, for any thing we knew, neither Tell nor Gesler had ever come within a league of the places we were examining. He dismissed us, at the end of the day, in a state of chagrin and dissatisfaction, which became absolute dismay when he told us that he proposed making such arrangements as would enable him to accompany us in our journey to the Alps of Berne. We exclaimed with one voice that we could not possibly remain another day, and we precipitately quitted his neighbourhood the next morning. He came to bid us farewell, and, when he saw us actually on the road, very cordially expressed his regret that we could not devote a little more time to the lake, since it never appeared to so much advantage as the day after a fall of rain.

sionate tone,

I lately made a short journey in the West of England with one of these amiable humourists; a man remarkable for a very sweet voice, an ungracious smile, and a malevolent near-sighted eye. His practice was, if any object drew the admiration of his companions, to disparage it by introducing some superior wonder of the same kind which he had visited in his travels, I believe for the sole purpose of mortifying those who had not. "My good Sir," he would ask, in a scornfully compas"have you seen Palermo? Have you been in the Crimea? Have you ever happened to look into the port of Scio?"-" My good Sir," said he to an honest Somersetshire gentleman, who had led us to a prospect of uncommon beauty and extent," did you ever see Cintra?" At the same moment he stepped backward and fell into a deep dry ditch; the western man assisted him in getting out, and seeing that he fretted and bustled, and endeavoured to magnify the accident, addressed him in his own phrase and manner, "My good Sir! did you ever tumble down Chedder cliffs?"

A fellow-traveller of this disposition is a wasting disease, and should be shunned accordingly. But there is a contrary habit of mind which a splenetic man finds almost as difficult to tolerate, though it is connected, no doubt, with honest and amiable qualities-I mean that proneness to wonder and be delighted without any known reason; which is usually a sign of great animal spirits and very little experience. I had once passed through Berwick with a gentleman of this lively character, very early in a dark and cheerless morning; the road is celebrated as one of the dullest in Great Britain, and I had carefully composed myself to sleep. Suddenly my friend recollected that we had crossed the Tweed; he sprang up, thrust his head out of both the carriage-windows, and then shouted aloud, "Well, Sir, we are in Scotland! Scotland land of the mountain and the flood, land of my sires!' (he was an Essex man)-And it really is a romantic countryyou do not see Nature on such a scale as this in England! candidly whether it equals your expectations." I saw a flat, open country, adorned with one cottage, two or three stone dykes, and a few patches of oats. "It is night and I am alone," (sang my companion,)

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Tell me

"forlorn on the hill of storms."-" I wish you were, from my soul," was my peevish answer. A pedlar came up and asked our driver if we had met the mail; which incident threw my friend into a new rapture at the originality of the Scottish character. I was a fellow-passenger of the same gentleman in an Ostend packet; he appeared on deck for the first time when he heard that we could see our place of destination. "Ostend! ay, there it is. A wonderfully strong place! Ostend, that cost the Spaniards seventy thousand men in one siege. And I do not doubt it at all. Any body may see that it is one of the finest fortified towns in Europe!" I borrowed his telescope, and found we were just near enough to distinguish half a dozen house-tops, three windmills, and a bank of sand.

This unreflecting eagerness to admire is a very innocent error when it extends only to an idle wondering at inanimate objects, the appearances of nature, or the exhibitions of art: but it is more than ridiculous, it is a source of incalculable dangers, when it leads the travelling novice to adopt false estimates of human character; to fashion his conduct after depraved models, and to draw his information from disreputable sources. I could illustrate this reflection by the history of a simple, sanguine young Englishman, my relation, whom I last saw at Heidelberg, cultivating a thin crop of mustachios, and a wiry handful of flaxen tresses, with a view of entering the University; his imagination being captivated by the habits and manners of the Teutonic youth. Some time before, he was at Aix-la-Chapelle, compiling a history of Bonaparte's return to France in 1815, from the information of a Colonel Count L'Escroc, (or some such name,) who professed to know all the secrets of that amazing enterprise, and to have enjoyed peculiar opportunities of observing it in all its stages. The Colonel was so pleased with my kinsman that he concealed nothing from him, not even his own pecuniary difficulties. In a little time it began to be rumoured at the Redoubt, that M. L'Escroc was neither Count nor Colonel, and that his alleged opportunity of watching the transactions between France and Elba in 1815, consisted in his having resided at that time on board the gallies at Toulon. My novice of course took measures to rid himself of his noble acquaintance, and desired the return of a sum of money for which the Colonel had consented to "become his banker;" the Colonel sent for answer a note of hand enclosed in a challenge, and we never heard of him more. Again I found my foolish relation at Naples, affecting to talk mysteriously of his liaison with a literary Marchioness, a robust elderly woman, or, as he expressed it, a matronly specimen of Italian beauty, who taught him to recite sonnets in a vile Neapolitan dialect, and persuaded him that he was wearing the chains of another Corinne. The poor youth imagined himself an accomplished wit and debauchee, and assumed a sheepish swagger, while he barbarously mouthed the old saying, Inglese italianato è diavolo incarnato.

But I forbear to dwell upon adventures of this kind, as they belong to a more extensive subject, and are connected with a more serious train of reflection than I have undertaken to deal with in the present trifling disquisition. Such anecdotes would be appropriate to a different kind of work, which I should gladly see commenced, a modern Gull's Hornbook for the use of British travellers on the Continent.

There is not a more common source of disagreement between asso

ciates in a tour of pleasure, than their different opinions with respect to the time and pains which ought to be bestowed on objects of curiosity. I myself am a leisurely traveller, but I was compelled in mere despair to abandon my old friend Job Furlong, who persuaded me a few years ago to make a journey with him in the north and west of France. Our intended route was through Normandy, Brittany, along the Loire, and so to Paris, where we were to consider how the rest of our time should be disposed of. After we had lingered three days at Dieppe, I was obliged to dislodge him by stratagem before he had half completed his inventory of remarkable things in the church of St. Remy. This caused him so many regrets that I did not venture to rebel while we hovered eight and forty hours about Neuchâtel and the Château d'Arques. On the ninth day we arrived at Rouen, and in three more we had taken a particular survey of the custom-house, the great clock-tower, the Marché-neuf, and seven of the principal fountains; and we had actually digested a plan for viewing the cathedral. It then occurred to me to calculate the time we were likely to spend in surveying the whole city, and I found that with good health, fine weather, and unabated activity, our task would probably engage us thirteen weeks. I represented this to my companion, who very calmly took the spectacles from his nose and the pen from his ear, and mildly answered that he had already been hurried more than was consistent either with health or with improvement; adding, in his quaint way, that travelling was one thing and steeple-hunting another, that he did not come into France to gallop over it like a Cossack, that he considered a foreign country as a book, and he, for one, would not turn the leaf till he had finished the page. Upon this explanation we parted; I left him, one fine day in September, pondering and pensive on the bridge of boats, and on the bridge of boats I found him again when I returned through Rouen from the tour we had proposed making together. He had by this time conquered six of eleven departments into which he had divided the remarkable objects of the city, but as winter was now beginning, he agreed to suspend his operations and return with me to England. Twice again did Job cross over to Normandy, and still the bridge of boats formed the boundary of his excursions; at last, in a moment of energy, upon a fourth visit, he boldly pushed across the Seine and proceeded as far as Evreux, but precipitately retraced his steps on recollecting that he had always omitted, while at Rouen, to taste the mineral spring of St. Paul. He had not finished criticising the smack of this water when he discovered a capital mistake in his measurement of the butter-tower; and in rectifying this, he was led to make some further speculations on the famous bell, said to be the largest in Europe, except one which is or was at Moscow. "When I complete my tour of the Continent," said Mr. Furlong, "I shall of course see Moscow; and it is a satisfaction to judge for oneself, even between two pieces of bell-metal." Winter, as usual, found him in the midst of his labours, and he carried home his note-book enriched with a voluminous supplement, and seven divisions of new queries, to be resolved on the next excursion.

But I prefer even the conscientious plodding of my friend Job, to the senseless activity of persons who flit from object to object, without taste or even curiosity, in a rapid and business-like discharge of what

they conceive to be their duty as gentlemen on their travels. I refused to dine with an Englishman at Paris, who told me (in a jargon which he affected) that he had "done" the picture-gallery of the Louvre in five hours and thirty-seven minutes without missing a number, and would engage to "knock off" the marbles in half that time. And I have never felt duly grateful for the hospitality of a well-meaning city gentleman, who once, when I was very young, insisted on my taking a corner of his carriage from Mayence to Dusseldorf. "I will shew you all the fine scenery of the Rhine," he said, "for I go this way on purpose, and I make it a point to miss nothing in travelling." To do him justice, we made easy journeys, and fared sumptuously. A servant was always sent on early to the place where we proposed resting for the night, and my friend piqued himself on arriving as punctually to dinner as if he had only driven down to his own house at Tooting. He carried with him what he called a "rout;" a written list of the objects and places to be noticed in each stage; and it was evidently the greatest pleasure he enjoyed, to cross out the names with his pencil, as we despatched the successive portions of our task. He never allowed a halt but with manifest uneasiness, except once, when we drew up to the inn-door at Bacharach to taste the wine. "Stop," he would say reluctantly to the postilion-" but you need not dismount. What is that town with the castle ?"-" Caub." "And that odd building in the middle of the river ?"- "The Pfalz.' "And that high place with the fortification?"-"The Rheinfels." "Drive on-be brisk. Come, we have seen Caub," (striking out the names as he spoke) "Pfalz, and Rheinfels, and we have only lost three minutes and a half-too much time--but it takes so long to make these Germans move again if they once stop." At Coblentz (which was one of our resting-places) I suggested that we should cross the river to visit the renowned fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. "Why," said he, "we saw it for a good quarter of an hour as we walked up that hill to the Chartreuse." "But that was such a distant view." "Well-stay-they will be ten minutes putting the horses to-run down to the water-side and look at it, and you shall have my telescope." When we approached the celebrated Seven Mountains, we were told that two of the eminences before us were Drachenfels and Rolandseck; both scenes of romantic legend. "And which is Drachenfels," said I, "and which Rolandseck?" "What does it matter?" answered my companion, we are sure we see them both:" And thus did we pass through the scenery of the Rhine, that

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Blending of all beauties; streams and dells,

Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, corn-field, mountain, vine,

And chief-less castles breathing stern farewells

From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.”

It was my fortune many years afterwards to meet the same gentleman a second time on the banks of the Rhine. We encountered each other at Cologne. He had just been "seeing," in his manner, all the notable things of this ancient city, from the skulls of the three Wise Men to the rival manufactories of scented water, and had completed his task within a quarter of an hour of dinner-time. I asked him whether he had seen the famous Crucifixion of St. Peter, one of the masterpieces of Rubens, lately replaced in the church for which it was originally painted. He had not heard of it, and far from receiving

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the suggestion with pleasure, he looked at me with as much mortification as if I had told him of a great loss at sea, or an elopement in his fa"I suppose I must see the picture. I mily. Well," he said at last, am sure I thank you for mentioning it. How far did you say it was to the church? You are certain the painting was in the Louvre? So unlucky! the thing happening at this time of day. Well! it is useless You know I am an enthusiast for Rubens-have a to say more. So the poor gentleman bustled away to Rubens myself at Tooting." St. Peter's Church, and I charitably followed to assist him in his hoWe arrived; he entered with his watch in his mage to the Fine Arts. hand, and made directly for the altar. The great picture is concealed from view by an imperfect copy which supplied its place while the original Crucifixion was detained at Paris: the visitor is allowed at first to cast his eyes upon the rude imitation, which is then withdrawn, and discloses one of the most astonishing works achieved by modern art. My friend, however, did not wait for this shifting of scenes; he briskly walked up to the external canvass-"Ah!" he cried, a very fine thing indeed! Rubens all over! Ten minutes past six, I declare. Well, I am glad I have seen the Rubens." And without waiting for remonstrance or explanation, he fled the church as precipitately as if the painted executioners had been alive and marking him out for their next victim.

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A worthy Londoner whom I once met at the Lakes was as much a man of business as my good friend of the Rhine, and carried his love of method still farther. We had passed each other on the banks of Windermere, and I had begun to climb a hill near Bowness, which seemed likely to afford an extensive view of the surrounding region. I had mastered two-thirds of the ascent (which in a sultry summer's day was no light task), when I observed my acquaintance looking after me in a violent fret and agitation, and I presently perceived that he The man begged I would come had sent his servant to overtake me, "Sir," said the good back and speak to his master. I returned. citizen (who was a plump, fatherly man, and evidently overheated with anxiety on my account,)—" Sir, you must excuse the liberty I am taking; but I believe you have not seen this book. I have travelled all round the Lakes, Sir, with it in my hand, and it has saved me from many mistakes, such as you were about to make just nowSir, do you know you were going to Station V. before you had been at Station IV.? Look what the book says 'Station IV. Rawlinson'snab is a peninsular rock of a circular figure, swelling to a crown in I believe, in the first energy of my reply I sent my the centre.' monitor and his book, and Rawlinson's-nab-farther than was consistent with strict politeness; and I shut myself up in my inn, determined not to leave it till he had gone the round of his stations according to the rubrick, and finally evacuated the country.

kind

My recollections would supply many other sketches of travelling society, but I pause for the present, lest the reader should refuse to proceed any farther in mine. If we part in kindness now, he will perhaps resume the subject with me hereafter.