328 MORE POT-POURRI 



C'est ennuyeux mortellement, et inline quelque pen 

 ridicule.' 



Railway travelling is always such a joy to me. I 

 never know which I like best looking out of the win- 

 dow, or feeling that I can read in peace without the 

 disturbances which are perpetually occurring elsewhere. 

 Going through France, I am always struck afresh by 

 the thinly populated look of the country, except just 

 near the towns. 



I had in my travelling bag a cutting from the ' Daily 

 Telegraph ' of January 5th, 1898 : Mr. Gladstone's 

 account of Hallam, a remarkably interesting paper, 

 one of those rare gifts sometimes bestowed upon us by 

 the daily press. It must have been almost the last, if 

 not quite the last, thing of any importance the old man 

 ever wrote. 



Has it ever been explained why the recollections of 

 youth are so engraven on the brain and flash out in old 

 age with such vivid clearness? Educated and unedu- 

 cated, clever and stupid, all seem to share the same 

 experience. The dullest of old people are interesting if 

 allowed to talk of their youth and themselves. The only 

 drawback is that they enjoy repeating over and over 

 again what they remember. Gladstone's half-jealous 

 criticism of Hallam spending eight months in Italy 

 between Eton and Cambridge includes so excellent a 

 description of travelling in the days that are gone that 

 it haunted me as I flew and rushed in my express in one 

 bound from Paris to Florence : 



' The agencies of locomotion have, within the last 

 seventy years, been not only multiplied, but trans- 

 formed. We then crept into and about countries ; we 

 now fly through them. When Arthur Hallam went with 

 his family to Italy, there was not so much as a guide- 

 book. It was shortly afterwards Mrs. Starke, under the 



