Those who have endurance and curiosity enough to face a tour in Sicily, may readily set out for Spain; rails and post-horses certainly get quicker over the country; but the pleasure of the remembrance and the benefits derived by travel are commonly in an inverse ratio to the ease and rapidity with which the journey is performed. In addition to the accurate knowledge which is thus acquired of the country (for there is no map like this mode of surveying), and an acquaintance with a considerable, and by no means the worst portion of its population, a riding expedition to a civilian is almost equivalent to serving a campaign. It imparts a new life, which is adopted on the spot, and which soon appears quite natural, from being in perfect harmony and fitness with everything around, however strange to all previous habits and notions; it takes the conceit out of a man for the rest of his life--it makes him bear and forbear. It is a capital practical school of moral discipline, just as the hardiest mariners are nurtured in the roughest seas. Then and there will be learnt golden rules of patience, perseverance, good temper, and good fellowship: the individual man must come out, for better or worse. On these occasions, where wealth and rank are stripped of the aids and appurtenances of conventional superiority, a man will draw more on his own resources, moral and physical, than on any letter of credit; his wit will be sharpened by invention-suggesting necessity. Then and there, when up, about, and abroad, will be shaken off dull sloth; action--Demosthenic action--will be the watch-word. The traveller will blot out from his dictionary the fatal Spanish phrase of procrastination _by-and-by_, a street which leads to the house of _never_, for “_por la calle de despues, se va a la casa de nunca_.” Reduced to shift for himself, he will see the evil of waste--the folly of improvidence and want of order. He will whistle to the winds the paltry excuse of idleness, the Spanish “_no se puede_,” “_it is impossible_.” He will soon learn, by grappling with difficulties, how surely they are overcome,--how soft as silk becomes the nettle when it is sternly grasped, which would sting the tender-handed touch,--how powerful a principle of realising the object proposed, is the moral conviction that we can and will accomplish it. He will never be scared by shadows thin as air, for when one door shuts another opens, and he who pushes on arrives. And after all, a dash of hardship may be endured by those accustomed to loll in easy britzskas, if only for the sake of novelty; what a new relish is given to the palled appetite by a little unknown privation!--hunger being, as Cervantes says, the best of sauces, which, as it never is wanting to the poor, is the reason why eating is their huge delight. [Sidenote: DELIGHTS OF A TOUR.]