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I was always fond of visiting new scenes,
and observing strange characters and manners.
Even when a mere child I began my travels,
and made many tours of discovery into foreign
parts and unknown regions of my native city,
to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the
emolument of the town-crier. As I grew into
boyhood, I extended the range of my observations.
My holiday afternoons were spent in

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rambles about the surrounding country. I
made myself familiar with all its places famous
in history or fable. I knew every spot
where a murder or robbery had been committed,
or a ghost been seen. I visited the neighbouring
villages, and added greatly to my stock
of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs,
and conversing with their sages and great
men. I even journeyed one long summer's
day to the summit of the most distant hill,
from whence I stretched my eye over many a
mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to
find how vast a globe I inhabited.

This rambling propensity strengthened with
my years. Books of voyages and travels became
my passion, and in devouring their contents,
I neglected the regular exercises of the
school. How wistfully would I wander about
the pier heads in fine weather, and watch the
parting ships, bound to distant climes—with
what longing eyes would I gaze after their
lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination
to the ends of the earth.

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Farther reading and thinking, though they
brought this vague inclination into more reasonable
bounds, only served to make it more decided.
I visited various parts of my own country; and
had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I
should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere
for its gratification: for on no country have
the charms of nature been more prodigally
lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of
liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright
aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility;
her tremendous cataracts, thundering in
their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving
with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers,
rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless
forests, where vegetation puts forth all its
magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic
of summer clouds and glorious sunshine:—no,
never need an American look beyond his own
country for the sublime and beautiful of natural
scenery.

But Europe held forth all the charms of storied
and poetical association. There were to be

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seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of
highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities
of ancient and local custom. My native country
was full of youthful promise; Europe was
rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her
very ruins told the history of times gone by,
and every mouldering stone was a chronicle.
I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned
achievement—to tread, as it were, in the footsteps
of antiquity—to loiter about the ruined
castle—to meditate on the falling tower—to escape,
in short, from the commonplace realities
of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy
grandeurs of the past.

I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to see
the great men of the earth. We have, it is true,
our great men in America: not a city but has an
ample share of them. I have mingled among
them in my time, and been almost withered by
the shade into which they cast me; for there is
nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade
of a great one, particularly the great man of a
city. But I was anxious to see the great men of

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Europe; for I had read in the works of various
philosophers, that all animals degenerated in
America, and man among the number. A great
man of Europe, therefore, thought I, must be as
superior to a great man of America, as a peak
of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and
in this idea I was confirmed, by observing the
comparative importance and swelling magnitude
of many English travellers among us;
who, I was assured, were very little people in
their own country. I will visit this land of
wonders, therefore, thought I, and see the gigantic
race from which I am degenerated.

It has been either my good or evil lot to
have my roving passion gratified. I have wandered
through different countries, and witnessed
many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot
say that I have studied them with the eye
of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering
gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque
stroll from the window of one print shop
to another; caught sometimes by the delineations
of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of

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caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of
landscape. As it is the fashion for modern
tourists to travel pencil in hand, and bring home
their port folios filled with sketches, I am disposed
to get up a few for the entertainment of my
friends. When I look over, however, the hints
and memorandums I have taken down for the
purpose, my heart almost fails me to find how
my idle humour has led me aside from the great
objects studied by every regular traveller who
would make a book. I fear I shall give equal
disappointment with an unlucky landscape painter,
who had travelled on the continent, but following
the bent of his vagrant inclination, had
sketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places.
His sketch book was accordingly crowded with
cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins;
but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the
Coliseum; the cascade of Terni, or the bay of
Naples; and had not a single glacier or volcano
in his whole collection.

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