I think that we all know the tourist in search of knowledge, the tourist who goes abroad determined not to waste a day, who is resolved to bring back with him when he returns from his travels information that shall be at any rate an equivalent to him for the money and time expended. This tourist in search of knowledge no doubt commands our respect in a certain degree. He is a sedulous man, probably exempt from any strong evil proclivities, anxious to do the best he can with his life, imbued with a respectable ambition, and animated by that desire to be better than those around him which generally saves a man from being below the average if it does not suffice to do more for him than that. But, having said so much in praise of tourists of this class, I do not know that there is much more to be said in their favour. Such men are usually bores as regards their effect upon others; and, as regards themselves, they seem in too many cases to have but little capacity for following up the special career which they have proposed to themselves. They are diligent in their inquiries, but have laid down for themselves no course of study. They wish to learn everything, but have too great a faith for learning everything easily. They have seldom realized to themselves how hard is the task of mastering information, and think that in going far afield from their own homes they have found, or are like to find, a royal road to knowledge. And then they have a worse fault than this incorrectness of idea which I have imputed to them. They are apt to forestall the merits which they should in truth never claim till the knowledge has been won, and as seekers for wisdom, assume the graces which others should give them when such acquired wisdom has become the manifest result of their labours. There are female tourists in search of knowledge as well as male; but a woman has so much more tact than a man, that she is usually able to hide that which is objectionable in her mode of action. Perhaps the middle-aged single lady, or the lady who is not yet middle-aged but fears that she may soon become so, is more prone to belong to this class of travellers than any species of man; but she keeps her investigations somewhat in the background, goes through her heavy reading out of sight, and asks her most pressing questions _sotto voce_, when she and her hoped-for informant are beyond the hearing of the multitude. The male investigator of Continental facts has no such reticence. He demands the price of wheat with bold voice before a crowd of fellow-travellers; he asks his question as to the population of the country, and then answers it himself with a tone of conscious superiority, and he suggests his doubts as to the political action of the people around him with an air of omniscience that is intended to astonish all that stand within hearing of him.