The only open question left seems
to be, whether Shakespeare were the only man that could write his name
who had never been there. We have read our share of Italian travels,
both in prose and verse, but, as the nicely discriminating Dutchman
found that "too moch brahndee was too moch, but too moch lager-beer was
jost hright," so we are inclined to say that too much Italy is just
what we want. After Des Brosses, we are ready for Henri Beyle, and
Ampere, and Hillard, and About, and Gallenga, and Julia Kavanagh;
"Corinne" only makes us hungry for George Sand. That no one can tell us
anything new is as undeniable as the compensating fact that no one can
tell us anything too old.
There are two kinds of travellers,--those who tell us what they went to
see, and those who tell us what they saw. The latter class are the only
ones whose journals are worth the sifting; and the value of their eyes
depends on the amount of individual character they took with them, and
of the previous culture that had sharpened and tutored the faculty of
observation. In our conscious age the frankness and naivete of the
elder voyagers is impossible, and we are weary of those humorous
confidences on the subject of fleas with which we are favored by some
modern travellers, whose motto should be (slightly altered) from
Horace,--_Flea-bit, et toto cantabitur orbe.
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