being only piece-meal. In this way, however, we remember an
infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical
instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them
in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time
excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot
as it were unfold the whole web of our existence; we must pick out the
single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived
and with which we have intimate associations, every one must have
found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the
spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression: we remember
circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not
thought of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is
forgotten!--To return to the question I have quitted above.

I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in
company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the
former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and will bear
talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and
overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will
bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In
setting out on a party of pleasure, the first consideration always is
where we shall go to: in taking a solitary ramble, the question is
what we shall meet with by the way. "The mind is its own place;" nor
are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do
the honours indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once
took a party to Oxford with no mean _eclat_--shewed them that seat of
the Muses at a distance,

"With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd"--

descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles
and stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the Bodleian;
and at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Ciceroni that attended
us, and that pointed in vain with his wand to common-place beauties in
matchless pictures.--As another exception to the above reasoning, I
should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign
country without a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the
sound of my own language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the
mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that requires the
assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from
home increases, t