Another aspect in which it is agreeable to contemplate Thackeray is that of a traveller, for in this character he must have gone over a considerable portion of the more interesting parts of the world. From India to England, in his seventh year, with that memorable call at St. Helena, where the youngster caught a fugitive glimpse of the great Napoleon in his solitary exile.
W. M. T. on his travels
Little journeyings about England between boyhood and youth, then a stolen visit to Paris, in a college vacation. Then the residence at Weimar and Eberfeld, with rovings about Germany. Then to Paris to see the world, to study men, manners, and pictures; half art-student, half pursuing the art of amusing oneself. Then a more serious application to the earlier stages of that somewhat lengthy road which every aspirant must plod who would follow the artist's career.
Let us take up one of his travelling companions and pass a day with the easy-working, comfortably-provided, and satirically-observant young 'buck,' who found himself so pleasantly at home in Louis Philippe's slightly uncertain capital.
'Planta's Paris' is not the most familiar of travelling companions, its descriptions are not altogether modern, but the glimpse it affords us of the French capital is curious from the circumstance that it registers the swiftness of change in the Centre of Pleasure. It might be an amusing study to reproduce from its pages the attractions of Paris in 1827, the date of the fifteenth edition of this work; but the stout square little book possesses a stronger interest, as it had the advantage of belonging to Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and in his pocket it probably tumbled and tossed across the Channel.
At Weimar
It is rather difficult to connect Mr. Titmarsh with the stereotyped extracts of a guide-book, but the copy under consideration was fortunately selected as a repository for the occasional sketches suggested to the fancy of its proprietor.
