sensations he thinks he ought to have
experienced, instead of letting us know what he saw and felt? If authors
would only consider that the way to write an enlivening book is not by
seeing and saying just what would be expected of them, but precisely the
reverse, the public would be gainers. What tortures have we not seen the
worthiest people go through in endeavoring to get up the appropriate
emotion before some famous work in a foreign gallery, when the only
sincere feeling they had was a praiseworthy desire to escape! If one
does not like the Venus of Milo, let him not fret about it, for he may
be sure she never will.

Montaigne felt obliged to separate himself from travelling-companions
whose only notion of their function was that of putting so many leagues
a day behind them. His theory was that of Ulysses, who was not content
with seeing the cities of many men, but would learn their minds
also. And this way of taking time enough, while we think it the best
everywhere, is especially excellent in a country so much the reverse of
_ fast_ as Italy, where impressions need to steep themselves in the sun
and ripen slowly as peaches, and where _carpe diem_ should be translated
_take your own time_. But is there any particular reason why everybody
should go to Italy, or, having done so, should tell everybody else what
he supposes he ought to have seen there? Surely, there must be some
adequate cause for so constant an effect.

Boswell, in a letter to Sir Andrew Mitchell, says, that, if he could
only _see Rome_, "it would give him talk for a lifetime." The utmost
stretch of his longing is to pass "four months on classic ground," after
which he will come back to Auchinleck _uti conciva satur_,--a condition
in which we fear the poor fellow returned thither only too often, though
unhappily in no metaphorical sense. We rather think, that, apart from
the pleasure of saying he had been there, Boswell was really drawn to
Italy by the fact that it was classic ground, and this not so much by
its association with great events as with great men, for whom, with
all his weaknesses, he had an invincible predilection. But Italy has a
magnetic virtue quite peculiar to her, which compels alike steel and
straw, finding something in men of the most diverse temperaments by
which to draw them to herself. Like the Siren, she sings to every
voyager a different song, that lays hold on the special weakness of his
nature. The German goes thither bec