The Desultory Man: Collection of Ancient and Modern British Novels and Romances. Vol. CXLVII.James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
General
The Desultory Man: Collection of Ancient and Modern British Novels and Romances. Vol. CXLVII.
James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
Fiction
At ---- I met with another traveller, still more decidedly locomotive.
He was a very gentlemanly young man, and I think might have been
something better, but habit had given his mind a sad twist. I asked
him what he thought of the Pyrenees, from whence he had just arrived.
He replied that "the roads were very fine;" he had gone nine miles an
hour up and down hill. I inquired if he had been at Bagnères de
Luchon. "Oh, yes," answered he, "I rode there from Bagnères de Bigorre
in six hours." Such seemed to have been the amount of his observations
on one of the most beautiful countries of Europe. He was travelling
against time.
Many who travel for health, without the command of a very large
fortune, lose, I am convinced, as much by the want of those comforts
they are accustomed to at home, as they gain by change of air.
However, I am equally certain that the mind has far greater power over
the body than we generally imagine; and that the mere rapid change of
scene and incident acts as powerfully as any medicine in the
Pharmacop[oe]ia.
Those who come abroad for economy may certainly now find it either in
France or Germany. In almost all parts of Italy they will find
themselves deceived. There is one thing, however, to be observed,
which is, that English people on the continent do not save by the
cheapness of the country only, but they economize by living as
foreigners do.
There is another class of travellers who come abroad to procure
greater luxuries than they can in England on the same income. I should
be sorry to censure a large portion of my countrymen, but I think that
those are scarcely excusable, who have neither curiosity nor desire of
information, nor limited means, nor ill-health to plead, but who, with
sufficient to maintain their rank in society at home, habitually spend
their fortune in a foreign country. Their virtue at all events is not
patriotism.
DIEPPE--THE EVENING.
Certes he was a most engaging wight,
Of social glee and wit humane tho' keen,
Turning the night to day and day to night.
CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.
The traveller we met at Dieppe could be included in none of the
classes I have just mentioned. He was a young officer of artillery
returning from the Ionian Isles. He had travelled much in Italy and
Greece, had a great deal of information, was willing to communicate
it, and communicated it well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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