through Part of France and Germany. ~ 3 



knowledge, much of the benefits to be derived from travelling 

 depends. The traveller, before he sets oat, may have con- 

 ceived the idea that what he has to see will surpass every thing 

 in his own country ; or he may have conceived a contrary idea, 

 and that the only benefit he can derive from seeing other 

 countries, is to make him thankful for his own. Both extremes 

 are to be avoided ; and the traveller should, in the first in- 

 stance, proceed to examine and describe all the particulars 

 of a country as a botanist would examine and describe a 

 plant. The description of the country, or of the practices of 

 any particular art in it, being completed in his mind, he may 

 then compare it with those of other countries, marking the 

 resemblances and differences. In doing this, he should be 

 particularly careful in applying the terms good and bad to the 

 practices or people of any country; because these terms, in 

 by far the greatest number of instances, are merely relative. 

 The original causes of all the grand differences which appear 

 in the productions of the earth, animal or vegetable, are cli- 

 mate and soil. It will almost always be found that similar 

 climates and soils, or,speakinggeographically, similar latitudes, 

 naturally produce similar animals and vegetables ; and that the 

 actual differences in the practices of nations living in the same 

 latitudes, depend on different degrees of civilisation. There- 

 fore, of two kinds of agriculture and national manners, each 

 may be very suitable for its own climate and soil, and yet totally 

 unfit for the climate and soil of the other ; and though such . 

 agriculture or manners may be said to be bad, relatively to that 

 soil, yet they are by no means bad of themselves, but actually 

 good. Of all the obstacles to self-improvement which a traveller 

 has to contend with, the greatest will generally be found his 

 own preconceived notions. We, in Britain, are particularly 

 subject to this infirmity : first, naturally, and in common with 

 all islanders ; and, next, factitiously, from our commercial in- 

 tercourse with all countries. Finding most countries inferior to 

 us in useful arts and manufactures, we are too apt to consider 

 them inferior to us in every thing else, or to set little value on 

 those things in which they are allowed to surpass us. The great 

 use of travelling is to neutralise this feeling, which, perhaps, 

 more than any other is the bane of particular and general 

 improvement. An impartial and careful examination of other 

 countries by a Briton, will discover to him that though they 

 may be inferior to his own country in point of the useful arts and 

 wealth, yet^'^that some of them are superior to it in point of the 

 fine arts and taste ; and what would he say, if he were to dis- 

 cover that in others the state of civilisation and the condition 

 of society evinced a more general diffusion of happiness? 



B 2 



