In former days the passport system was a difficulty which afflicted the minds of timorous travellers. Apart from the surveillance implied, there was the trouble and expense of procuring it, and having the proper _visas_ affixed by the representatives of Continental Governments; the anxiety lest in passing some corner of a foreign territory—some debateable land—it might not be _en règle_; the detentions it occasioned, and the perturbation of spirit which arose, should it by any accident have been mislaid or lost, there being no absolute certainty that if imprisoned in a cold, damp, dreary dungeon for want of the necessary safe–conduct, our Government after a suitable period of fruitless negotiation would go to war with the foreign power for the defaulter’s release. On one occasion (in 1855), on entering Geneva by diligence, I missed my passport (which on arrival I found lying at my feet), and did not know what would happen, but the man in collecting passports from the passengers fortunately overlooked me. This was a species of the rarest good luck, upon which of course it was utterly impossible to reckon; and the passport system was one which was felt by people living in a land in which every one is free, without inquiry of any kind, to travel where and when he pleases, to be an intolerable annoyance. It is still maintained; but with a view, I presume, not to discourage English travelling (a source of immense profit to the natives), a British subject has only on passing a frontier to declare his nationality, and he is at once passed through, except at some places where he is asked for his carte–de–visite; and if he have not one at hand, even this is not insisted on if it be apparent that he is what he represents himself to be, _un Anglais_, or, what is the same thing to them, an American. Yet a passport is sometimes useful; it now costs little, and should always be taken. It is easily got under the directions contained in Bradshaw’s _Continental Guide_, and the _visas_ of the foreign consuls seem now to be unnecessary, at least for the countries in which we were to travel. It is particularly important in some towns, to facilitate the obtaining of registered letters. Even ordinary letters occasionally, as I have found (1872) at Brussels on a former trip (having unfortunately lost my passport at Strasburg), will scarcely be delivered at the Poste Restante without production of the passport or other presumable evidence of identity; and it is said in guide–books, although we have never experienced the benefit of the information, that it operates as an admission to certain places of public resort.