These previous reflections, on what a student ought to know before he travels, will pretty well point out to us what he has to do while in foreign countries. I shall not attempt to indicate the particular edifices which deserve his attention; but I would rather recommend him to study whatever strikes him most. He will get on faster, and probably farther, by carefully improving his natural taste, than in endeavouring to form to himself another. And let him never forget that the object of his study is to trace out beauties, not to enumerate defects, and congratulate himself on his own superiority, or on that of his country: he is to hunt out what is excellent, and to separate the gold from the dross; and if in buildings generally praised, he cannot find any thing to admire, he may be pretty confident that there is some defect in himself. Their merits perhaps may consist in particulars to which he is less sensible than many other people, and he may think such particulars more highly valued than they deserve, and he may possibly be right in so thinking; yet if he be not capable of seeing those merits, it must be attributed to his want of eyesight. Many students in architecture seem to employ themselves wholly in measuring different buildings, ancient or modern, and imagine that while so doing, their time is necessarily well employed. To a certain degree this is a desirable occupation, and it fills the portfolio, and makes a great display of industry; yet it is possible to be more industrious, and more usefully so, and have less to shew. No artist has the notion of ever following any of these buildings minutely in his own productions. Who would ever think of copying the Pantheon in its precise dimensions, and in its details, or what employer either public or private could ever require it? and if it were to be done, have we not engravings which would be sufficiently exact? In a length of 144 feet, it is impossible to consider an inch or two more or less, as of any importance. Nor is the wish to return with a great number of laborious drawings a reasonable motive. After the first month or two they are neglected, and as they have little beauty in themselves, and are not wanted for imitation, they sleep perhaps for ever in the portfolio. The real motive for measuring any building is to understand it better. The student’s attention is forced in succession on each individual part; he gets it as it were by heart, and what he possesses on paper is of little value compared with that which he fixes in his mind, and indeed the principal merit of the first is, that it recals the latter, which among so many objects might be forgotten.