l.

I sat upon a wall of the upper town and considered how each of these
ships were going to some different place, and how pleasant it was to
roam about the world. Behind the ships, along the stone quays, were a
great number of wooden huts, of offices built, into archways, of little
houses, booths, and dens, in each of which you could take your passage
to some place or other.

"Now," said I to myself, "now is the time to be free." For one never
feels master of oneself unless one is obeying no law, plan, custom,
trend, or necessity, but simply spreading out at ease and occupying the
world. In this also Aristotle was misled by fashion, or was ill-informed
by some friend of his, or was, perhaps, lying for money when he said
that liberty was obedience to a self-made law; for the most distant hint
of law is odious to liberty. True, it is more free to obey a law of
one's own making than of some one else's; just as if a man should give
himself a punch in the eye it would be less hurtful and far less
angering than one given by a passer-by; yet to suffer either would not
be a benefit of freedom. Liberty cannot breathe where the faintest odour
of regulation is to be discovered, but only in that ether whose very
nature is largeness. Oh! Diviner Air! how few have drunk you, and in
what deep draughts have I!

I had a great weight of coined, golden, metallic money all loose in my
pocket. There was no call upon me nor any purpose before me. I spent an
hour looking down upon the sea and the steamships, and taking my pick
out of all the world.

One thing, however, guided me, which was this: that desire, to be
satisfied at all, must be satisfied at once; and of the many new
countries I might seek that would most attract me whose ship was
starting soonest. So I looked round for mooring cables in the place of
anchor chains, for Blue Peter, for smoke from funnels, for little boats
coming and going, and for all that shows a steamboat to be off; when I
saw, just behind a large new boat in such a condition of bustle, a sign
in huge yellow letters staring on a bright black ground, which said, "To
the Balearic Islands, eight shillings"; underneath, in smaller yellow
letters, was written: "Gentlemen The Honourable Travellers are warned
that they must pay for any food they consume." When I had read this
notice I said to myself: "I will go to the Balearic Islands, of which
the rich have never heard. I, poor and unencumbered, will go and visit