When we try to get at the reason for these extraordinary performances, people offer different explanations. This one will call it "taking a holiday." The other will say that he has had an unhappy love affair and needs distraction. For the most part, people will confess that they are trying to forget something--their wife, their children, their business. All seem tormented by the same desire for novelty. What they are seeking from men and monuments and places in foreign lands is something not yet seen, a fresh enjoyment, a virgin impression which shall draw them outside the circle of outworn sensations. It is something to rouse a happy wonder, and fulfil a hope of pleasure that always keeps ahead of any pleasure experienced. Do they find it? Everyone must answer for himself. Many probably never ask themselves the question, lest they be obliged to confess a weary disappointment. Before this procession of churches, statues, and pictures, where shall we stop, what shall we try to retain? How shall we disentangle the significance of things, the meaning and power and expressiveness of which can only be grasped by deep study? It would be too simple, if one need merely open one's eyes in order to understand. The work of art speaks, but we must know its language. Not only is time wanting, knowledge of the need of knowledge is wanting in most passers by, who will never do anything but pass by. Their pride is satisfied when they can say: "I have seen." That is the most definite part of their harvest of pleasure. It is apparently a conscientious scruple that obliges them to go out of their way to obtain it. "I am going to Rome," said a young Englishman to Miss Harriet Martineau, "oh, just so as to be able to say that I have been there." "Why don't you say so without going?" was the simple reply. It is upon Italy particularly that the crowd hurls itself. Wherever you may go in that classic land, you will be surrounded by an ever-rising flood of the natives of every known continent, all seeking under new skies for self-renewal. Silent, tired, their eyes straining at invisible things, they file past with their shawls and veils and parasols, levelling field glasses, marking maps, asking senseless questions, and emitting exclamations expressive of an equal admiration for everything they see. I have always pitied these poor people, dragged from their native land by a force which their simple minds are unable to analyze. They will never express their disappointment, most of them will never realize it. But I feel it for them, and I pity their wasted effort. It was a consolation to me to find one day that there are people who turn homeward satisfied, with the object of their desires attained, and the happiness secured of having seen and felt what it is granted only to a chosen few to see and feel.