1828.] [ 241 J 
TRAVELLING PARTICULARITIES : 
No. V. 
A CHEAP JOURNEY. 
Ir cannot be doubted that there are numerous persons in England, 
well qualified to appreciate the advantages of foreign travel, and to 
enjoy its pleasures, who are deterred from even thinking of undertaking 
it themselves, from a feeling that it requires an outlay, both of time and 
money, which is altogether inconsistent with their occupations and 
means. We shall perhaps be performing a useful and acceptable service 
to such persons, if we can make it appear to them, that for the very same 
sum which it would cost them to fool or dawdle away a fortnight of their 
time “comfortably” at some cockney “ watering-place,” they may, 
during the same period of time, travel over five hundred miles of three 
different kingdoms, and visit five or six great foreign towns, and as many 
smaller ones, allowing themselves sufficient time to gain a clear and 
characteristic general notion of each, and of all the varieties of inter- 
mediate country, modes of travelling, external manners and appearance 
of the people, &c.; and all this without stinting themselves in any one 
thing that may conduce to their personal comfort on the journey. 
To most of those who have travelled in foreign countries, and to all who 
have not, this will appear, as a bare proposition, incredible. We shall 
therefore proceed at once to prove its truth. But as this can only be 
done by descending into details, of a kind which do not ordinarily find a 
place in works whose paramount object is amusement, our readers will 
have the goodness to bear in mind, that, for this once, our wish is, not so 
much to present them with ready-made amusement, as to point out to 
them the means by which they may create or gather it for themselves. 
Our object will perhaps best be gained by supposing the case of a 
bachelor (for the time-being, at any rate), who is incumbered with no 
more luggage than will go into one “ leathern convenience,” no more 
nationality than he can lay aside in cases where he would be better 
without it, and no more fastidiousness than just enough to make him 
merely prefer, without positively requiring, the best of all possible ac- 
commodations in the way of inns, vehicles, &c. These qualities sup- 
posed, added to a general desire to be pleased in his mind, and a ten pound 
Bank of England note in his pocket, and we will engage to put him in 
the certain way of passing amore agreeable and instructive fortnight than 
he ever yet did pass, if he has never quitted his native country. 
To avoid the possibility of either doubt or misunderstanding as to our 
proposed method of going to work, we will give “ chapter and verse” 
for every thing, under the form of a journal of the supposed fourteen 
days ; and in order to avoid the dryness which almost necessarily apper- 
tains to the due performance of our main design, we will add a hasty 
glance at “ men and things” as they throng by us in our brief’ passage. 
The journey we shall choose is, from London to Brussels, by the way of 
Calais, and (for variety’s sake) back by the way of Ostend. ‘Time, of 
course the long days of summer. We will start our traveller by the 
London steamer from the Tower stairs, on (say) the first Monday in July. 
Monpay, 5 o'clock p.m.—Those who have never adopted this com- 
paratively new method of reaching France, should be informed that it 
saves half in expense, as much in time, and five-sixths in the little troubles 
M.M. New Serics—Vou. VI. No. 33. 21 
