re anxious to learn what has
been and view with stolid indifference what actually is. Something of
this transitory nature belongs to all sketches of travel. It is the one
great reason why so very few of the countless number of such works,
written, and sometimes written by men of highest ability, are hardly
heard of a few years after publication. Travels form a species of
literary production in which great classics are exceedingly rare.

From this fatal characteristic, threatening the enduring life of such
works, most of Warner's writings of this sort were saved by the method of
procedure he followed. He made it his main object not to give facts but
impressions. All details of exact information, everything calculated to
gratify the statistical mind or to quench the thirst of the seeker for
purely useful information, he was careful, whether consciously or
unconsciously, to banish from those volumes of his in which he followed
his own bent and felt himself under no obligation to say anything but
what he chose. Hence these books are mainly a record of views of men and
manners made by an acute observer on the spot, and put down at the moment
when the impression created was most vivid, not deferred till familiarity
had dulled the sense of it or custom had caused it to be disregarded.
Take as an illustration the little book entitled "Baddeck," one of the
slightest of his productions in this field. It purports to be and is
nothing more than an account of a two weeks' tour made to a Cape Breton
locality in company with the delightful companion to whom it was
dedicated. You take it up with the notion that you are going to acquire
information about the whole country journeyed over, you are beguiled at
times with the fancy that you are getting it. In the best sense it may be
said that you do get it; for it is the general impression of the various
scenes through which the expedition leads the travelers that is left upon
the mind, not those accurate details of a single one of them which the
lapse of a year might render inaccurate. It is to the credit of the work
therefore than one gains from it little specific knowledge. In its place
are the reflections both wise and witty upon life, upon the characters of
the men that are met, upon the nature of the sights that are seen.

This is what constitutes the enduring charm of the best of these pictures
of travel which Warner produced. It is perhaps misleading to assert that
they do not furn