ies which have so much extended
our knowledge and enlarged our resources--the contemplation is by no
means to an inhabitant of these islands equally satisfactory. The
British traveller is essentially a man of energy and action, but rarely
of contemplation or eloquence. He is seldom possessed of the scientific
acquirements requisite to turn to the best account the vast stores of
new and original information which are placed within his reach. He often
observes and collects facts; but it is as a practical man, or for
professional purposes, rather than as a philosopher. The genius of the
Anglo-Saxon race--bold, sagacious, and enterprising, rather than
contemplative and scientific--nowhere appears more strongly than in the
accounts of the numerous and intrepid travellers whom they are
continually sending forth into every part of the earth. We admire their
vigour, we are moved by their hardships, we are enriched by their
discoveries; but if we turn to our libraries for works to convey to
future ages an adequate and interesting account of these fascinating
adventures, we shall, in general, experience nothing but disappointment.
Few of them are written with the practised hand, the graphic eye,
necessary to convey vivid pictures to future times; and though numerous
and valuable books of travels, as works of reference, load the shelves
of our libraries, there are surprisingly few which are fitted, from the
interest and vivacity of the style in which they are written, to possess
permanent attractions for mankind.

One great cause of this remarkable peculiarity is without doubt to be
found in the widely different education of the students in our
universities, and our practical men. In the former, classical
attainments are in literature the chief, if not exclusive, objects of
ambition; and in consequence, the young aspirants for fame who issue
from these learned retreats, have their minds filled with the charms and
associations of antiquity, to the almost entire exclusion of objects of
present interest and importance. The vigorous practical men, again, who
are propelled by the enterprise and exertions of our commercial towns,
are sagacious and valuable observers; but they have seldom the
cultivated minds, pictorial eye, or powers of description, requisite to
convey vivid or interesting impressions to others. Thus our scholars
give us little more than treatises on inscriptions, and disquisitions on
the sites of ancient towns; while t