ts and trades,
so many times is he a man. A foreign country is a point of comparison
where-from to judge his own. One use of travel is, to recommend the
books and works of home; (we go to Europe to be Americanized;) and
another, to find men. For as Nature has put fruits apart in latitudes,
a new fruit in every degree, so knowledge and fine moral quality she
lodges in distant men. And thus, of the six or seven teachers whom each
man wants among his contemporaries, it often happens that one or two of
them live on the other side of the world.

Moreover, there is in every constitution a certain solstice, when the
stars stand still in our inward firmament, and when there is required
some foreign force, some diversion or alternative, to prevent
stagnation. And, as a medical remedy, travel seems one of the best. Just
as a man witnessing the admirable effect of ether to lull pain, and,
meditating on the contingencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, rejoices
in Dr. Jackson's benign discovery, so a man who looks at Paris, at
Naples, or at London, says, "If I should be driven from my own home,
here, at least, my thoughts can be consoled by the most prodigal
amusement and occupation which the human race in ages could contrive and
accumulate."

Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the aesthetic value of railroads
is to unite the advantages of town and country life, neither of which we
can spare. A man should live in or near a large town, because, let his
own genius be what it may, it will repel quite as much of agreeable and
valuable talent as it draws, and, in a city, the total attraction of all
the citizens is sure to conquer, first or last, every repulsion, and
drag the most improbable hermit within its walls some day in the
year. In town he can find the swimming-school, the gymnasium, the
dancing-master, the shooting-gallery, opera, theatre, and panorama,--the
chemist's shop, the museum of natural history, the gallery of fine arts,
the national orators in their turn, foreign travellers, the libraries,
and his club. In the country he can find solitude and reading, manly
labor, cheap living, and his old shoes,--moors for game, hills for
geology, and groves for devotion. Aubrey writes, "I have heard Thomas
Hobbes say, that, in the Earl of Devon's house, in Derbyshire, there was
a good library and books enough for him, and his Lordship stored the
library with what books he thought fit to be bought. But the want
of good conversatio