of seeing the country. There
are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid,
in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But
landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of
the brotherhood does not voyage in quest of the picturesque, but of
certain jolly humours--of the hope and spirit with which the march
begins at morning, and the peace and spiritual repletion of the
evening's rest. He cannot tell whether he puts his knapsack on or
takes it off with more delight. The excitement of the departure puts
him in key for that of the arrival. Whatever he does will be further
rewarded in the sequel; and so pleasure leads on to pleasure in an
endless chain."

An admirable opening, full of the right relish. And the wit and relish
are maintained down to the last sentence. But it cannot fail to awaken
memories of the great departed in the reader of books. "Now to be
properly enjoyed," counsels Stevenson, "a walking tour should be gone
upon alone. . . . a walking tour should be gone upon alone because
freedom is of the essence," and so on in the same vein for twenty or
thirty lines. One immediately recalls Hazlitt--"On Going a Journey":
"One of the pleasantest things is going on a journey; but I like to go by
myself. . . . The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to
think, feel, do just as one pleases."

A suspicion seizes the mind of the reader, and he will smile darkly to
himself. But Stevenson is quite ready for him. "A strong flavour of
Hazlitt, you think?" he seems to say, then with the frank ingenuousness
of one who has confessed to "playing the sedulous ape," he throws in a
quotation from this very essay of Hazlitt's and later on gives us more
Hazlitt. It is impossible to resent it; it is so openly done, there is
such a charming effrontery about the whole thing. And yet, though much
that he says is obviously inspired by Hazlitt, he will impart that
flavour of his own less mordant personality to the discourse.

If you turn to another, the "Truth of Intercourse," it is hard to feel
that it would have thrived had not Elia given up his "Popular Fallacies."
There is an unmistakable echo in the opening paragraph: "Among sayings
that have a currency, in spite of being wholly false upon the face of
them, for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject which is
accidentally combined with the error, one o