formed. =f [ Fx. 
A TRAVELLER'S RECOLLECTIONS. 
I nave been for many years a rambler, but chiefly through Europe. 
The traveller’s club was not established when I began my career, and I 
therefore was not under the necessity of “ booking myself for China,” 
as is required by the statutes of that great locomotive institution. 
A simple sight of Mount Caucasus was enough for me. I ventured only 
within a days sail of Columbia ; and saw no more of New Holland, than 
might be communicated by the sight of a native, whom I met in a 
whaler, embalmed, by order of the governor of Sydney, as a present to 
the Zoological Society. 
In my wanderings, too, I differed from the tourists of this world in 
another point. I eschewed picture galleries, cathedrals, crown jewel 
offices, and “ glorious chateaux,” that no man living could distinguish 
from a Dutch stable. An English one would offer no comparison. My 
business was with man, much; and with woman, a little. I have always 
thought a man of sense, to the full as amusing as the tallest steeple that 
ever pierced the sky ; and the colour on a lovely female cheek worth 
all the carnation ever laid on canvas by the pencil. From the pomps of 
Palladio, and the magic of Titian, I turned to living lips and eyes; and, 
though the whole world of Dilettanti, measuring-rod and sketch-book 
in hand, must be struck dumb at my gothicism, I am still wedded to 
my heresy, and shall, to the last, think that the happiest descriptions 
of brick and mortar may grow dull, the liveliest catalogue of pictures 
lose its gaiety, and that, while we have our senses about us, the pleasant- 
est “ study of mankind is man.” 
As the specimens of this unusual study rose before me, I frequently 
made brief memoranda, sufficient to mark the leading features. Of 
those I shall give you a few in succession. My first is of a beautiful 
creature whom I met at Vienna.* She was French, but with a grace 
and Italian look of sensibility that seldom honours the countenance 
beyond the Alps. Strange to say, with my picture-antipathy, my first 
knowledge of her was from a picture. 
I was one morning at the Leopold Museum, where all Vienna flocked 
to see the portrait of Madame de M. I contemplated it with a pleasure 
justified by the perfection of the features, and the finish of the execu- 
tion. The beauty of the original had augmented the talent of the artist. 
The grave Imperial Aid-de-camp who accompanied me, after smil- 
ing at my long trance of admiration, proposed to introduce me to the 
acquaintance of the model, and in the evening conducted me to the 
soirée of the Comtesse de M. The portrait of the salon lost much of its 
merit in my eyes, as soon as they caught a glance of the original. The 
painter could not seize and arrest on the canvas the grace which dis- 
tinguished each motion of the young Comtesse. The spirit and anima- 
tion that heightened her slightest expression, that mingling of dignity 
and affability, which reflected itself on her countenance, rendered it one 
of the loveliest, one of the most seductive, that I had ever seen. After 
having dispersed her card tables—arranged the players—seated her 
Boston in the middle of the room—shut up in a corner the eternal pic- 
quet—the fair Comtesse came to rejoin, at one extremity of the apart- 
ment, a little group, so lucky as to escape the distribution of the markers 
—and to prefer to the melancholy pastimes of whist or écarté, the more 
rare pleasure of an agreeable and spirited conversation. 
ee ion sadam seh 
