up aloft had taken special charge of it, or
it would have long ago withered.

We slept at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which we found fresh, sweet,
bright,--it must have been recently rejuvenated, I thought. The next day
we took the train for New Haven, Springfield, and Boston, and that night
slept in our own beds, thankful to find ourselves safe at home after our
summer excursion, which had brought us so many experiences delightful to
remember, so many friendships which have made life better worth living.

In the following section I shall give some of the general impressions
which this excursion has left in my memory, and a few suggestions
derived from them.

VIII.

My reader was fairly forewarned that this narrative was to be more like
a chapter of autobiography than the record of a tourist. In the language
of philosophy, it is written from a subjective, not an objective, point
of view. It is not exactly a "Sentimental Journey," though there are
warm passages here and there which end with notes of admiration. I
remind myself now and then of certain other travellers: of Benjamin of
Tudela, going from the hospitalities of one son of Abraham to another;
of John Buncle, finding the loveliest of women under every roof that
sheltered him; sometimes, perhaps, of that tipsy rhymester whose record
of his good and bad fortunes at the hands of landlords and landladies is
enlivened by an occasional touch of humor, which makes it palatable to
coarse literary feeders. But in truth these papers have many of the
characteristics of private letters written home to friends. They
_are_ written for friends, rather than for a public which cares
nothing about the writer. I knew that there were many such whom it would
please to know where the writer went, whom he saw and what he saw, and
how he was impressed by persons and things.

If I were planning to make a tour of the United Kingdom, and could
command the service of all the wise men I count or have counted among my
friends, I would go with such a retinue summoned from the ranks of the
living and the dead as no prince ever carried with him. I would ask Mr.
Lowell to go with me among scholars, where I could be a listener; Mr.
Norton to visit the cathedrals with me; Professor Gray to be my
botanical oracle; Professor Agassiz to be always ready to answer
questions about the geological strata and their fossils; Dr. Jeffries
Wyman to point out and interpret the common objects which pre