Most men inhabiting a countryside know nothing of its aspect even quite close to their homes, save as it is seen from the main roads. If they will but cross a couple of fields or so, they may come, for the first time in many years of habitation, upon a landscape that seems quite new and a sight of their own hills which makes them look like the hills of a strange country.
In youth we all know this. In youth and early manhood we wonder what is behind some rise of land, or on the other side of some wood which bounded our horizon in childhood. Then comes a day when we manfully explore the unknown places and go to find what we shall find.
As life advances we imagine that all this chance of discovery has been taken from us by our increased experience. It is an illusion. If we are so dull it is we that have changed and not the world; and what is more we can recover from that dulness, and there is a simple medicine for it, which is to repeat the old experiment: to go out and see what we may see.
Some will grant this true of the sudden little new discoveries quite close to home, but not of travel. Travel, they think, must always be to-day by some known road to some known place, with dust upon the mind at the setting out and at the coming in. It is a great error. You can choose some place too famous in Europe and even too peopled and too large, and yet make the most ample discoveries there.
"Oh, but," a man will say, "most places have been so written of that one knows them already long before seeing them."
No: one does nothing of the kind. Even the pictured and the storied places are full enough of newness if one will but shake off routine and if one will but peer.
Speak to five men of some place which they have all visited, perhaps together, and find out what each noticed most: you will be amazed at the five different impressions.
Enter by some new entry a town which hitherto you had always entered by one fixed way, and again vary your entry, and again, and you will see a new town every time.
There are many, many thousand Englishmen who know the wonderful sight of Rouen from the railway bridge below the town, for that lies on the high road to Paris, and there are many thousand, though not so many, who know Rouen from Bon-Secours. There are a few hundred who know it from the approach by the great woods to the North. There are a dozen or so perhaps who have come in from the East, walking from Picardy. The great town lying in its cup of hills is quite different every way.