le
security, and our stocks safe. In America it requires almost as much
vigilance to _take care_ of property, as it does industry to acquire it.

Mr. Hugh Roger Littlepage--by the way, I bore the same name, though I
was always called Hugh, while my uncle went by the different
appellations of Roger, Ro, and Hodge, among his familiars, as
circumstances had rendered the associations sentimental, affectionate,
or manly--Mr. Hugh Roger Littlepage, Senior, then, had a system of his
own, in the way of aiding the scales to fall from American eyes, by
means of seeing more clearly than one does, or can, at home, let him
belong where he may, and in clearing the specks of provincialism from
off the diamond of republican water. He had already seen enough to
ascertain that while "our country," as this blessed nation is very apt
on all occasions, appropriate or not, to be called by all who belong to
it, as well as by a good many who do not, could teach a great deal to
the old world, there was a possibility--just a _possibility_, remark, is
my word--that it might also learn a little. With a view, therefore, of
acquiring knowledge seriatim, as it might be, he was for beginning with
the hornbook, and going on regularly up to the belles-lettres and
mathematics. The manner in which this was effected deserves a notice.

Most American travellers land in England, the country farthest advanced
in material civilization; then proceed to Italy, and perhaps to Greece,
leaving Germany, and the less attractive regions of the north, to come
in at the end of the chapter. My uncle's theory was to follow the order
of time, and to begin with the ancients and end with the moderns;
though, in adopting such a rule, he admitted he somewhat lessened the
pleasure of the novice; since an American, fresh from the fresher fields
of the western continent, might very well find delight in memorials of
the past, more especially in England, which pall on his taste, and
appear insignificant, after he has become familiar with the Temple of
Neptune, the Parthenon, or what is left of it, and the Coliseum. I make
no doubt that I lost a great deal of passing happiness in this way, by
beginning at the beginning, or by beginning in Italy, and travelling
north.

Such was our course, however; and, landing at Leghorn, we did the
peninsula effectually in a twelvemonth; thence passed through Spain up
to Paris, and proceeded on to Moscow and the Baltic, reaching England
from Ham