his relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a
passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find
himself in the deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen: there
must be allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old Rome that
claims the utterance of speech; and I own that the Pyramids are too
mighty for any simple contemplation. In such situations, so opposite
to all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by
one's-self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet with
instant fellowship and support.--Yet I did not feel this want or
craving very pressing once, when I first set my foot on the laughing
shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The
confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into
my ears; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was sung from the top of an
old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien
sound into my soul. I only breathed the air of general humanity. I
walked over "the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France," erect
and satisfied; for the image of man was not cast down and chained to
the foot of arbitrary thrones: I was at no loss for language, for that
of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The whole is
vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled:
nothing remains but the Bourbons and the French people!--There is
undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into foreign parts that is to be
had nowhere else: but it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It
is too remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of
discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state of
existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an
animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to
exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse of
our old transports revive very keenly, we must "jump" all our present
comforts and connexions. Our romantic and itinerant character is not
to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel
added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad.
In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and in one
sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of our substantial,
downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the
same, but another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time
we are out of our own co