ittle space to be able to look at it closely, as men
carry with them small locket portraits of their birthplace or of those
they love.

If a pilgrimage is all this, it is evident that however careless, it
must not be untroublesome. It would be a contradiction of pilgrimage to
seek to make the journey short and rapid, merely consuming the mind for
nothing, as is our modern habit; for they seem to think nowadays that to
remain as near as possible to what one was at starting, and to one's
usual rut, is the great good of travel (as though a man should run
through the _Iliad_ only to note the barbarous absurdity of the Greek
characters, or through Catullus for the sake of discovering such words
as were like enough to English). That is not the spirit of a pilgrimage
at all. The pilgrim is humble and devout, and human and charitable, and
ready to smile and admire; therefore he should comprehend the whole of
his way, the people in it, and the hills and the clouds, and the habits
of the various cities. And as to the method of doing this, we may go
bicycling (though that is a little flurried) or driving (though that is
luxurious and dangerous, because it brings us constantly against
servants and flattery); but the best way of all is on foot, where one
is a man like any other man, with the sky above one, and the road
beneath, and the world on every side, and time to see all.

So also I designed to walk, and did, when I visited the tombs of the
Apostles.

THE ARENA

It was in Paris, in his room on the hill of the University, that a
traveller woke and wondered what he should do with his day. In some
way--I cannot tell how--ephemeral things had captured his mind in the
few hours he had already spent in the city. There is no civilisation
where the various parts stand so separate as they do with the French.
You may live in Paris all your life and never suspect that there is a
garrison of eighty thousand men within call. You may spend a year in a
provincial town and never hear that the large building you see daily is
a bishop's palace. Or you may be the guest of the bishop for a month,
and remain under the impression that somewhere, hidden away in the
place, there is a powerful clique of governing atheists whom, somehow,
you never run across. And so this traveller, who knew Paris like his
pocket, and had known it since he could speak plain, had managed to
gather up in this particular visit all the impressions which are least