"I never even heard of it," said M—.
I was going to say ex uno disce omnes, this is how la jeunesse doré of the present time travel on the continent—to finish their education, by the way! but my remark would be of too sweeping a character, for there are many exceptions to be met with occasionally. Still, though travelling is multiplied a thousand-fold compared with what it used to be even only a century ago, it is doubtful, I think, if travelling is as fruitful of good results in our days as it used to be in the days of our grandfathers, when, under the guidance of a well qualified tutor, young men used to take the "grand tour" with a view to completing their education, the foundation and groundwork of which had been laid first in our public schools, and then in our great universities. Now my friend M— was a charming fellow, well educated to a certain point, pleasant, agreeable, and good-tempered; he had travelled a good deal, and yet I may safely say he had seen nothing, and simply because he had not prepared himself for travelling with a view to thoroughly seeing the countries he intended visiting, and obtaining the information they could bestow. And how many are there that just travel in the same way! How many are there among those who yearly flood the approaches to the Eternal City who do more than lounge about the galleries, the Campo Vaccino, or the Pincian Hill! and who, if asked about the City of Veii (for instance) will simply open their eyes and say they never heard of it, where is it? Why, my good fellow, Veii was a great city, and its inhabitants among the most civilized and luxurious in the world, long before Rome was built. What! before Rome was built? he will say; and then if some mild reminiscence of the kind comes across his memory, he may, perhaps, recall some fleeting visions of Agamemnon and Mycenæ, taking it for granted that Veii, if anterior to Rome, must have been in Greece; but when informed that Veii was the rival of Rome, that its ruins were within twenty miles of the Eternal City, he will possibly get angry and think you are chaffing him. He, no doubt, may have heard of Etruria, but probably in his mind it was jumbled up with Minton's pottery; if associated with Wedgewood, it will be a point in his favour. He may probably have heard of Etruscan cities and Etruscan vases, but all his information in this line is terribly hazy; and so he dawdles through his sojourn at Rome, goes on to Naples, perhaps to Palermo and Malta, returning to England by the P. and O. steamer, imagining that he has seen, or done, Italy, as he terms it.
It so happened that I had made arrangements for another tour, and was thus unable to join my three friends in their intended expedition; but the following Winter M— and I went to the continent together, we spent four months in Italy, that Italy he had so thoroughly "done" twice before! and to his amazement, he had to confess that in his previous journeys he had simply wasted his time and his money.
We visited numberless out of the way places, having made Florence our head-quarters for Central Italy, and there under the guidance of Micali's Antichi Popoli Italiani, we dived into the history of Italy, beginning with the misty periods synchronous with the siege of Troy, illustrating them as we went along by visits to the ancient cities and cemeteries of Etruria, and thence through those glorious Middle Ages and their unparalleled works of art, which can nowhere be so well studied as in Italy! It was a surpassing pleasure to him, no doubt, to see for the first time all those wondrous things; but it was almost as great a delight to me to witness his raptures, his astonishment, as city after city came under our examination—Fiesole, Volterra, Chiusi, Cortona. This last, especially, struck him with astonishment, a city co-eval with Ilium, and still in our days a city preserving its ancient name, while of Ilium, periêre ipsæ ruinæ, and its very existence questioned, till the researches of the indefatigable Schliemann brought monuments to light within the last few months which have clearly identified the spot, and proved to a demonstration that Ilium really had existed, and that the siege of Troy was not simply a myth, a poet's dream!
I well remember helping him to measure the immense blocks of the ancient walls of Cortona, fitted with such wonderful exactness that the blade of a penknife can even at present be scarcely pushed in between them, and which still remain in situ without mortar or other cement, though probably thirty centuries have rolled on since those walls were erected by the ancestors of their present inhabitants. How I remember the interest he took in scanning from the hill which looks over the rippling water of the Trasymene Lake, pointing out the probable spot where those false-hearted Romans had rested whilst the battle was raging below, only to be overtaken, however, on the morrow by Hannibal and his victorious legions, who made them pay so dearly for their treachery.
"This is the way I like to study history, and this is the way never to forget it," said he. "I hated the very names of Tacitus and Livy, but how delightful I think them now!" and so we did do Italy from Agrigentum to the Alps, and from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, and many queer out-of-the-way places we visited, and such scores of sketches we carried away; and a more delightful trip never was made before or since.
Captain Hutchinson, in his introduction to "Try Lapland," writes, "The difficulty of finding new ground for travel is increasing every year for those who, with but a limited time at their disposal, are yet tired of the beaten paths of Ramsgate or Scarborough, Switzerland or the Rhine, and pant after lands fresh and fair, of which they have never seen the photograph—where the gorgeous hotel with its elongated bills, and the pertinacious touter with his cringing greasy manners, are alike unknown."
Now to a great extent that pleasant writer is correct; but the man who rushing away from the turmoil and bustle of London life, whether he be lawyer, merchant, or physician, seeking for fresh air and scenery, but as far away as possible from those hackneyed tracks infested by the typical tourist, both English and Transatlantic, and by poor Marryat's "shilling-seeking, napkin-holding, up-and-downstairs son of a sea-cook" of an hotel waiter, need not go to the Arctic Circle to find all the above-named advantages, unless, indeed, he is bent on also seeing the sun at midnight, and his own body a prey to the mosquitoes.
Within five days of Temple Bar, or as we soon shall have to say, where Temple Bar once stood, there are as splendid countries to explore, as fine ruins to contemplate, as glorious scenery and as gorgeous costumes to admire, as the heart of man can wish for; and if the reader will trust himself with me for a little while, excusing the many shortcomings he will meet with in these pages, I will lead him over a trip I took last Summer which I think will fully repay him, though he will often have to make great allowances and deal leniently with the Author, who for the first time in his life rushes into print, just for the same reason that the stars shine above us, because he has nothing else to do! But if through publishing this little book he shall have opened up a new field of travel to those who yearly require to recruit their strength of body and of mind by a ramble in foreign lands, if he shall have added one more possible source of enjoyment to those within the reach of the many, he will consider himself amply repaid for whatever trouble he may have been put to in its compilation.
