322 MORE POT-POURRI 



eight months in Italy between Eton and Cambridge in- 

 cludes 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 : 



1 The agencies of locomotion have within the last 

 seventy years bsen not only multiplied, but transformed. 

 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 auspices 

 of Murray, founded that branch of literature, and within 

 the compass of one very moderate volume expounded in 

 every particular the whole continent of Europe. But this 

 is only the outside of the case. A visit to Italy was then 

 the summit of a young man's aspirations ; it now supplies 

 some half-dozen rapid stages in larger tours, where we 

 run much risk of losing in discipline and mental stimulus 

 what we gain in mileage. When it took sixteen or eighteen 

 days to post to Borne, each change of horses was an 

 event. The young traveller could not but try to make the 

 most of what he had bought so dear. Scene, history, and 

 language now flash before the eye ; then they soaked into 

 the soul. Men were then steeped in the experiences of 

 Italy ; they are now sprinkled with the spray. Its scenery, 

 its art, its language, which was a delight and luxury to 

 learn ; its splendid literature ; its roll of great men, 

 among whom Dante himself might serve to build up the 

 entire fame of a nation ; and its place in history, which 

 alone connects together the great stages of human civilisa- 

 tion all these constituted a many-sided power which 

 was brought to bear almost in a moment on the mind 

 of Arthur Hallam. I knew it, for I suffered by it. The 

 interval between his progress and my own, always long, 

 became such that there was no joining hands across it. I 

 was plodding on the beaten and dusty path, while he was 



