few descriptions of scenes, copied from
guide-books, and anecdotes picked up at _tables-d'hote_ or on board
steamboats, constitute the stock in trade of many an adventurer who
embarks in the speculation of paying by publication the expenses of his
travels. We have no individuals in view in these remarks; we speak of
things in general, as they are, or rather have been; for we believe
these ephemeral travels, like other ephemerals, have had their day, and
are fast dying out. The market has become so glutted with them that they
are, in a great many instances, unsaleable.

The classical travellers of England, from Addison to Eustace and Clarke,
constitute an important and valuable body of writers in this branch of
literature, infinitely superior to the fashionable tours which rise up
and disappear like bubbles on the surface of society. It is impossible
to read these elegant productions without feeling the mind overspread
with the charm which arises from the exquisite remains and
heart-stirring associations with which they are filled. But their
interest is almost exclusively classical; they are invaluable to the
accomplished scholar, but they speak in an unknown tongue to the great
mass of men. They see nature only through the medium of antiquity:
beautiful in their allusion to Greek or Roman remains, eloquent in the
descriptions of scenes alluded to in the classical writers, they have
dwelt little on the simple scenes of the unhistoric world. To the great
moral and social questions which now agitate society, and so strongly
move the hearts of the great body of men, they are entire strangers.
Their works are the elegant companions of the scholar or the antiquary,
not the heart-stirring friends of the cottage or the fireside.

Inferior to Britain in the energy and achievements of the travellers
whom she has sent forth, and beyond measure beneath her in the amount of
the addition she has made to geographical science, France is yet greatly
superior, at least of late years, in the literary and scientific
attainments of the wanderers whose works have been given to the world.
Four among these stand pre-eminent, whose works, in very different
styles, are at the head of European literature in this interesting
department--Humboldt, Chateaubriand, Michaud, and Lamartine. Their
styles are so various, and the impression produced by reading them so
distinct, that it is difficult to believe that they have arisen in the
same nation and