he accounts of our practical men are
chiefly occupied with commercial enquiries, or subjects connected with
trade and navigation. The cultivated and enlightened traveller, whose
mind is alike open to the charm of ancient story and the interest of
modern achievement--who is classical without being pedantic, graphic and
yet faithful, enthusiastic and yet accurate, discursive and at the same
time imaginative, is almost unknown amongst us. It will continue to be
so as long as education in our universities is exclusively devoted to
Greek and Latin verses or the higher mathematics; and in academies to
book-keeping and the rule of three; while so broad and sullen a line as
heretofore is drawn between the studies of our scholars and the pursuits
of our practical citizens. To travel to good purpose, requires a mind
stored with much and varied information, in science, statistics,
geography, literature, history, and poetry. To describe what the
traveller has seen, requires, in addition to this, the eye of a painter,
the soul of a poet, and the hand of a practised composer. Probably it
will be deemed no easy matter to find such a combination in any country
or in any age; and most certainly the system of education, neither at
our learned universities nor our commercial academies, is fitted to
produce it.

It is from inattention to the vast store of _previous_ information
requisite to make an accomplished traveller, and still more a writer of
interesting travels, that failures in this branch of literature are so
glaring and so frequent. In other departments of knowledge, a certain
degree of information is felt to be requisite before a man can presume
to write a book. He cannot produce a treatise on mathematics without
knowing at least Euclid, nor a work on history without having read Hume,
nor on political economy without having acquired a smattering of Adam
Smith. But in regard to travels, no previous information is thought to
be requisite. If the person who sets out on a tour has only money in his
pocket, and health to get to his journey's end, he is deemed
sufficiently qualified to come out with his two or three post octavos.
If he is an Honourable, or known at Almack's, so much the better; that
will ensure the sale of the first edition. If he can do nothing else, he
can at least tell the dishes which he got to dinner at the inns, and the
hotels where comfortable beds are to be found. This valuable
information, interspersed with a