"Turin, June 16th, 1748.
"I wrote you about three weeks ago. This is brought into England by Mr. Bathurst, a nephew of Lord Bathurst, who intended to serve a campaign in our family. We know nothing as yet of the time of our return. But I believe we shall make the tour of Italy and France before we come home. 'Tis thought the general will be sent as public minister to settle Don Philip; so that we shall have seen a great variety of Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, and French courts in this jaunt.
Qui mores hominum multorum vidit, et urbes.
"I say nothing of Milan, or Turin, or Piedmont: because I shall have time enough to entertain you with accounts of all these. Though you may be little diverted with this long epistle, you ought at least to thank me for the pains I have taken in composing it. I have not yet got my baggage."
Far different was the pomp and circumstance in which the writer of this narrative performed his
journey, from the condition in which Goldsmith, four years afterwards, pursued nearly the same route to—
——where the rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door.
And Hume's motions seem to have partaken of the pomp and regularity of his official station; for, even in these familiar letters to his brother, he is all along the secretary of legation; or when he descends from that height, it is but to mount the chair of the scholar and philosopher. There are no escapades. We never hear that he has taken it in his head to diverge from the regular route to see an old castle or a waterfall. Yet he went with an eye for scenery. The Alpine passes excited his admiration, and his description of the banks of the Rhine will be recognised at this day as very accurate—with one material exception. He says nothing of the feudal fortresses perched like the nests of birds of prey, to which their moral resemblance was at least as close as their physical; and thus one of the greatest historians of his age, passes through a country without appearing to have noticed in their true character, this series of prominent marks of a remarkable chapter in the history of Europe. He speaks of them simply as "palaces"—a word not designative of the character of the buildings, or in any way evincing that their historical position had occurred to his mind. But it must be admitted, that later tourists on the Rhine have amply made up for his silence on these matters.
He does not condescend to mention any one of the fine specimens of Gothic architecture which he must have seen—not even that vast and beautiful fragment the cathedral of Cologne. One wonders whether or not he was at the trouble of inquiring, what was