From year to year we see in our guide-books and volumes of travel the silly boastings which drive silly men and women into this difficulty. Those who inform us how we should travel continually speak to us as though German and Italian were known to most of us, and talking French was as common with us as eating and drinking. But to talk French well is not common to Englishmen; it is in truth a rare accomplishment. And then these informants, armed, let us hope, with true knowledge on their own parts, jeer most unmercifully at us poor tourists who venture to come abroad in our ignorance. We are ridiculed for our dumbness if we are dumb, and for our efforts at speech if we attempt to speak. And then we are talked at, rather than addressed. The accomplished informant who intends to guide us speaks always to some brother as accomplished as himself, and warns this learned brother against the ignorance of the masses. It is not very long since a distinguished contributor to a very distinguished newspaper advised his readers that an Englishman at Rome should never know another Englishman there; and this warning of Britons against other Britons on the Continent is so common that it has reached us all. It means nothing; or, at any rate, should be taken as meaning nothing. Not one amongst twenty of English men or English women who travel, can travel, or should attempt to travel, after the fashion which is intended to be prescribed by these counsellors. A few among us may so live abroad as to become conversant with the inner life of the people with whom they are dwelling,--to know their houses, their sons and their daughters; to see their habits, to talk with them, eat with them, and quarrel with them; but to do this is not and should not be the object of the vacation tourist; and if the vacation tourist cannot save himself from being made miserable by his guide-books and pretentious informants, because he is unable to do that which he never should have regarded as being within his power, he had certainly better remain at home.