84 PROSE K PI \ A. 



banks, since I cannot gather it any more on the rocks of 

 the Vosges, or in the divine glens of Jura. 



2. Among the losses, all the more fatal in heing un- 

 felt, brought upon us by the fury and vulgarity of 

 modern life, I count for one of the saddest, the loss of 

 the wish to gather a flower in travelling. The other day, 

 whether indeed a sign of some dawning of doubt and 

 remorse in the public mind, as to the perfect jubilee of 

 railroad journey, or merely a piece of the common daily 

 flattery on which the power of the British press first de- 

 pends, I cannot judge ; but, for one or other of such 

 motives, I saw lately in some illustrated paper, a pictorial 

 comparison of old-fashioned and modern travel, represent- 

 ing, as the type of things passed away, the outside passen- 

 gers of the mail shrinking into huddled and silent dis- 

 tress from the swirl of a winter snowstorm ; and for 

 type of the present Elysian dispensation, the inside of a 

 first-class saloon carriage, with a beautiful young lady in 

 the last pattern of Parisian travelling dress, conversing, 

 Daily news in hand, with a young officer her fortunate 

 vis-a-vis on the subject of our military successes in 

 Afghanistan and Zululand.* 



3. I will not, in presenting it must not be called the 

 other side, but the supplementary, and wilfully omitted, 

 facts, of this ideal, oppose, as I fairly might, the dis- 



* See letter on the last results of our African campaigns, in the 

 Morning Post of April 14th ; of this year. 



