What a glorious thing is knowledge, and how terrible to us are those lapses of opportunity with which the consciences of most of us are burdened in this respect! And to us who are ignorant, whose lapses in that respect have been too long to have been numerous, how great the man looms who has really used his intellect, and exercised his brain, and stirred his mind! But as he looms large, so does the ignorant man who affects acquirements and prides himself on knowledge which can hardly even be called superficial--as, spread it as thin as he may, he cannot make it cover a surface--appear infinitesimally mean and small! The getter-up of quotations from books which he has never read,--how vile he is to all of us! The man who allows it to be assumed that he can understand a subject or a language till he breaks down, caught in the fact, despised, but pitied through the extent of his misery,--how poor a creature he is in his wretchedness! The tourist in search of knowledge may of course be a man infinitely too strong to fall into any of these pitfalls. He may be modest-minded though ambitious, silent in his search, conscious of his ignorance where he is ignorant, and doubtful of his learning where he is learned. No doubt there are such English tourists,--many of them probably passing from city to city year after year,--with eyes and ears more readily open than their mouths; but not such a one is the tourist of whom we are here speaking. Travellers such as they become liable to no remark, and escape the notice of all observers. But the normal traveller in search of knowledge, with whom all of us who are habitual tourists are well acquainted, is altogether of a different nature. He is the Pharisee among students. He is always thanking God that he is not as those idlers who pass from country to country learning nothing of the institutions of the people among whom they travel,--not as that poor Publican, that lonely traveller, who, standing apart, hardly daring to open his mouth, asks some humble question which shows thoroughly and at once the extent of his ignorance.