A class of men called commercial travellers is very numerous in England and Ireland. They are a relic of the period preceding this great advertising age, and go about from town to town soliciting orders and selling goods of which they carry samples. Many of them are peddlers also, and sometimes carry great value in money, jewelry, etc., and offer story-tellers an attractive field for wild tales of robbery on lonely roads, and murder in wayside inns. They all have some story of this kind to relate. In Ireland, a room in every hotel is set apart, called the commercial room, for the exclusive use of these men, whose business transactions and responsibility require special care and convenience, and where they can deposit their valuables without danger of loss or damage. I was in a car once with one of these lonely gentlemen, and he told me he travelled from the 1st of January to the 23d December.
The company of a wife is not considered conducive either to economy or to profit; but their life must be a dreary one, especially in Ireland, where the accommodation on the railroads and in some of the country hotels is not only very poor, but even dangerous to health. In England even, they have just begun to heat their cars, which are far below those on the Continent; and in Ireland, at least in winter, I have had to sleep in a room with a quarter inch of mildew dank and dark upon the walls. Persons travelling for pleasure, however, are not generally subjected to this last inconvenience, as the localities frequented by tourists are furnished with whatever is needful for their comfort.
Pleasure is, doubtless, the object of most travellers; but it includes much more than the word in its usual acceptance might imply. The wealthy English travel in the mild, genial climates of southern Europe during the prevalence at home of that indescribably abominable weather which sits on London like a plague during the autumn and winter. Some of them also go abroad because they cannot afford to reside at home. They revel in the atmosphere of Rome and Naples—so mild that oranges bloom and flowers deck the walls all through the wintry season. The sun is bright, while the weather is not so mild as to interfere with balls, parties, concerts, etc.; and hunting the fox, the wild boar, and the deer, with the intoxicating pleasures of the carnival, and visits to the interesting monuments of pagan and Christian times, make up a round of diversion and entertainment peculiar to Italy.
The American tourist partakes of the same enjoyments, only that his pleasure is sometimes interrupted and marred by the workings of his practical and ever-active brain. I heard of one of our countrymen paying a moonlight visit to that noblest of ruins, the Coliseum, in company with a party composed of various nationalities. While they gazed in silent, entranced contemplation at its dark majesty, with the rays of the pale planet making its black recesses visible by contrast; while they pictured to themselves 100,000 fair women and brave men seated in its circuit, witnessing the bloody tragedy of the dying gladiator or the triumphant martyr of Christ, the Yankee was asked his impressions, and replied, on reflection, that “it was rayther large, but money might be in the concern if ‘twas only roofed in and whitewashed!”
I need not go to great length to show the pleasure which travelling affords; the delight which all take in seeing new and strange places, customs, works of art, ruins of antiquity, cataracts, mountains, rivers, etc.—all of which have a wonderful charm in lightening one’s heart, wearied by care; in purifying and strengthening the brain, dimmed and dizzied by labor, and filling us with pure and exquisite delight. Besides, many find in travel a refuge from the routine of fashion, and the prospect of that lingering pain which follows her severe, artificial, often painful enjoyments. In other countries you do as you please. You are not criticised if you be not absolutely en rapport with the usages of the tyrant fashion at home, because she has stayed there; nor with the ways of her sister abroad, because no one extages pects you to be au fait in customs not your own. Moreover, you can live more cheaply, and your health is benefited by the change. Hence, families broken down often leave England and go abroad for economy’s sake, thus obtaining freedom by their apparent misfortune.
The student of history and the classics is the one who finds most pleasure in visiting foreign lands. Every town, every river, plain, mountain range, and country, has an indescribable attraction for him, and he gazes still charmed upon scenes which may very soon sate the curiosity of others. His pleasure is one which, if you are a reader, you will appreciate; and, if not, it would be impossible for me to make you understand. See one of these visiting Lake George. His imagination covers the water with the three hundred boats in which Montcalm advanced to the siege of Fort William Henry. He sees Leatherstocking and Uncas plodding through the forest on their war-path, dropping silently down the stream by night, and putting up their heads from under the water for a stolen breath of air, while the bushes on the bank are filled with savages watching for their scalps; stopping to eat and drink in the middle of the forest at what we now call the Congress Spring at Saratoga. Let him gaze for the first time on the coast of Ireland—what an interest has that venerable and lovely land for him! He at once looks out for the ruined castles of her decayed nobility; he seeks thirstingly a sight of those round towers which stand old but fresh monuments of that time “when Malachy wore the collar of gold which he won from the proud invader”; and he remains alone, apart on the deck, recalling in sad satisfaction the scene that presented itself long ago, when abbeys, churches, and schools crowned the fair hill-tops of Erin. Let him stroll companionless through London’s busy streets—he is not alone. David Copperfield, Pickwick, Micawber, Sim Tappertit, Agnes, Little Dorrit, Bill Sykes, and Fagin are always passing and repassing; acting their parts for his entertainment. Let him view the tall, white cliffs of Dover, and he sees Cæsar’s fleet approaching to the conquest of Albion. Calais recalls the days of Catholic England’s greatest military glory. Every spot of France, Germany, Italy lives again for him in one short space its life of two or three thousand years; for all the events of its history, all the heroes of its glory, are present to his memory and imagination even more than their present phases to his vision to-day. He sees the tradesmen of Flanders, the butchers, bakers, weavers, smiths, combining for the liberation of their country at the battle of the Golden Spurs, so called from the immense number of these articles found on the field, representing the number of professional soldiers of knightly rank slain by these bold democrats, whose liberties they came to invade. He feasts his eyes upon the “vine-clad hills of Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine,” which his boyish imagination had pictured and laid back in the most loving recesses of his heart. In Switzerland, the mountain-passes are crowned for him by the native heroes, sons of Tell, and of those others who, in the days of Catholic Switzerland, rose against the Austrian despot, and in a band of 1,300 patriots defeated 60,000 hirelings of tyranny at the battle of Morgarten. At Innsbruck, he venerates the soil consecrated by the deeds of the citizen-soldier and martyr of liberty, Andreas Höfer; at Venice, he recalls the glories of the republican queen of the seas; while his interest and pleasure reaching their height in the city of the popes, he pursues a boundless career of enjoyment as he gazes on the monuments, walks over the localities, peoples again the streets and forums, making all the heroes, poets, and great women of royal, republican, imperial, and Papal Rome live their lives and do their great deeds over again, and all for him, all for him. No amount of reading or meditation at home can supply the pleasure derived from visiting the famous places of history, while the previous reading creates the desire and predisposes for the pleasure. Hence it is that all students like so much to travel, and to travel on foot.
Those who travel expensively lose a great deal of the benefit and interest of travel. The magnificent hotels are filled with English and Americans, principally those who affect that rank and demand that obsequiousness abroad to which they could not aspire at home. Many of them are very ignorant, and the waiters, for their sake, speak a mongrel kind of English, which is simply unbearable when it is not absolutely needed. The latter affect English ways; and, though you may desire to practise your college French, German, or Italian, they insultingly reply in your own tongue, as if to spare you any further exhibition of your ignorance, and because their avarice makes them more anxious to learn English than that you should acquire a foreign tongue. I asked one of these servants once how much I was to pay the hackman. My question was in German, his answer in English; but I was on the point of paying thirty-six cents for the lesson I gave him in our language, as he told me to give the man eighty-four kreutzers instead of forty-eight, because he didn’t know how to translate acht und pfierzig. The tourist who, through his ignorance of the language or his desire of display, frequents these English hotels, learns nothing of the languages, nothing of the customs of the people, scarcely anything of the cuisine, but becomes a target for the attacks of interpreters, guides, lying ciceroni, and a host of hangers-on, who impose on him in proportion to his ignorance, and palm off falsehoods on him suited to his bigoted preconceptions on every subject. In the drawing-room and at the table, he may as well be at home in London or New York, as far as language, habits, etc., are concerned, and he often leaves a country with less real knowledge of it than he had before he came.
The artist, the student, the gentleman bachelor, who stroll about for their own pleasure, and pay no unnecessary homage to fashion or humbug—these are the ones who derive genuine pleasure from the novelty and constant surprises of new customs, languages, and people. I have seen such persons, some of them men of independent fortune, travelling in omnibus or on foot about Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. They send their trunks on to some known hotel in a place fifty miles off, and then, carrying simply a knapsack with necessaries for a few days, take a stick and perhaps a pencil and paper, and leisurely walk along the fine roads of those countries, meeting a village every few miles, where they can take some refreshment, or stay over night. This is seeing a country, and knowing its language, customs, people, by personal observation, and not through the uncertain medium of hotel guides. And who would compare the restrained formality of fashionable moving about to the glorious freedom of this? The students of the English College at Rome used to travel thus two or three together during vacation, and spend the time delightfully.
When visiting the ancient, interesting city of Nürnberg last August—its old castle where the peace of Westphalia was signed, and where many of the Western emperors resided; its curious walls and fortifications; its old mediæval houses, with six stories, under an oblique roof; its curious fountains; and the residence of Albrecht Dürer—I entered a magnificent temple of old Catholic times, that of S. Lawrence, now devoted to Lutheran worship. All the crucifixes, pictures, and statuary with the altars still remain; for Luther was a much more intelligent man than many who imitated his rebellion. I was admiring the tabernacle of marble tracery, which reaches from the pavement seventy feet up to the roof along one of the pillars, and is the most exquisite piece of poetry in miniature stone I ever saw, when my attention was drawn to two students, boys of sixteen or seventeen, who were likewise visiting the church. They were very plainly dressed; for the old Catholic universities are free in Europe, and good conduct only is required as a condition of membership. On their backs, they had knapsacks with straps coming over the shoulders, and containing doubtless a change of clothing, while the long German pipe was seen stuck into the bundle. They carried sticks in their hands, and one had a guide-book, and was reading therefrom, and pointing out to his companion the objects of interest existing in the church. I watched the boys with great interest, and felt how happy they were in their simple manners and pure friendship—happy in the possession of knowledge more than if they had the Rothschilds’ wealth or Bismarck’s power; they were in love with and betrothed to wisdom, and independent of the world. Walking about afterwards round the great moat and curious turreted walls of this famous town, I came across my two friends, seated on a bench in the shaded, turf-set promenade which girds part of the city, taking their frugal meal of the inevitable sausage and brown bread of the country. Thus they strolled about from town to town, living plainly and simply as their means—the gift, perhaps, of some patron—required, but happy in the banquet which their own erudition and friendship provided. I have seen many travellers, and they have remained longer or shorter in my memory; but the picture of the two students of Nürnberg will remain with me always.
Among those who travel we may include that class so numerous in our own day in proportion to the increase of the enemies of the supernatural—those who, to satisfy their devotion, visit holy places. The sight of persons or localities associated with supernatural events or with the lives of those whose heroic sanctity we venerate, impresses us beings of half spiritual, half corporeal formation in a wonderful degree. I need not dilate on this. It is the reason why, in all ages, such multitudes have traversed land and sea, spent years even of their lives in visiting the Holy Land, Rome, Loretto, Compostella. That they obtained pleasure and sensible satisfaction you may easily imagine; and that they aided the faith by supplying constant information relative to the locality of sacred events, and thus kept up the strength of tradition, cannot be denied; but I would console those whose responsible care of family or office, whose want of means or leisure, prevent their assuming the pilgrim’s scrip and staff, with the words of Thomas à Kempis: Qui multum peregrinantur, raro sanctificantur.