It always seems to me a good plan to start with the history of the country to which your steps are turned, because the chief interest of every land must naturally be derived from its past, from the people who made it what it is, and who lived in its buildings, on its lands, and worshipped in its temples. If the country in which we travel be our own England, we generally have learnt enough of its history to make the names of the actors in it household words; and the local histories have been carefully collected for us by the many archæological societies in all parts of England. So that we may, if we like, know all particulars of the styles of living, and the people, and manners of the past centuries. In England especially, men who lived in it made the interest of the land they lived in, and the same is true of Scotland. But in Ireland it was different, and there the land is the chief point of interest, and the interest is with legend more than with real people and things. If the Green Isle had only been fortunate enough to have a wizard-like Walter Scott to touch the scenery, and make it alive with people, what a change it would have worked for her to-day! For a history of England we cannot do better than select Green’s _History of the English People_, which is not only history, but history written in a delightsome manner, and quite long enough to be interesting and concise enough not to fatigue the reader of any age. But if time be not an object to you, take Miss Strickland’s histories and read them through, every one of them, even including those of the _Bachelor Kings_. It may be the fashion to think her gossipy, but her gossip is worth anything in making you feel that the people of whom you read really lived, breathed, and walked the earth. Scott, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, Shakespeare, and Ossian; and in Ireland both Lever and Lover should bear you company, while the reminiscences of Dean Ramsay and Wilson will make you feel Edinburgh doubly delightful. In the far north, William Black has touched Thule and the Hebrides with the pen of romance; and Kingsley and Blackmore have done the same in the south, with _Westward Ho!_ and _Lorna Doone_. And in London we walk with Thackeray and Dickens, on every side, from Piccadilly and Clubland to Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Fleet Street. Beside the romancer we must also read Freeman’s _English Towns and Districts_ and Fergusson’s _Architecture_, George Barrow’s _Wild Wales_, King’s _Handbook of the Cathedrals_, and Cassell’s _Old and New London_. Alfred Rimmer’s book on the _Ancient Streets and Homesteads of England_ is most helpful, and I will end by remarking that you had better begin Ruskin, with, I think, the Elements of Drawing and the _Lectures on Art_.