Those who come to Spain to see something that belongs to her, would not wish her peculiarities to be diminished; those who wish to find in Spain what they can have in Paris or in London, had better stay away. In travel, profit and enjoyment always coincide, for none can profitably travel who do not go to seek out for things different from what they are accustomed to, and none can agreeably travel but those for whom it is an enjoyment to be and to feel like the people of the country in which they are. For my part, I should be as careful to possess completely the thought or the habit of a people as to master a problem of Euclid; and as careful to keep distinct in my mind the thoughts and customs of one people from those of another, as if they were medicines or chemical substances ranged upon a shelf. There is no difficulty in learning half-a-dozen different languages; but you could not learn one if you jumbled in every sentence the words of your own tongue, or converted the foreign one into your own syntax. If you did so, the knowledge of words would extinguish the faculty of speech, and this is what we do when we reason, in our own country’s fashion, on the thoughts of another;--keep these distinct and you can multiply existence as you can multiply languages. Then you can put yourself in the place of a Frenchman or Italian, and will know what, under any given circumstances, he will think or do; this you do not reason upon, and therefore are sure of. This character of interest scarcely, indeed, presents itself amongst the people of Europe, on the one hand from their close resemblance, and on the other from the extinction of habits and traditional thoughts; but when you get into Spain, there it does present itself to whoever will discriminate it; the word of every peasant is not a reverberation of a proposition, but a record of centuries. To one who feels this, Spain will present the most interesting field of travel in Europe; to one who does not, the most gratifying. An English resident at Gibraltar told me that, by following a certain rule, he found travelling in Spain very agreeable, and recommended it to my adoption. He said, “I always address a Spanish peasant as if he were my equal.” “I do not require,” I replied, “your rule, for I feel myself honoured whenever a Spanish peasant condescends to speak to me.” There is, however, a rule not only by which to make travelling pleasant, but to make life itself so, and that is, to seek for and see in others only what is good and profitable, in order to correct, or, at least, comprehend, that in ourselves which is useless or faulty; but this is not a rule.