account, observes the President
Bouhier, he cared neither for the chase, nor building, nor gardening, nor
agricultural pursuits, and was exclusively occupied with reading and
reflection, he devoted himself with satisfaction to the task of setting
down his thoughts just as they occurred to him. Those thoughts became a
book, and the first part of that book, which was to confer immortality on
the writer, appeared at Bordeaux in 1580. Montaigne was then
fifty-seven; he had suffered for some years past from renal colic and
gravel; and it was with the necessity of distraction from his pain, and
the hope of deriving relief from the waters, that he undertook at this
time a great journey. As the account which he has left of his travels in
Germany and Italy comprises some highly interesting particulars of his
life and personal history, it seems worth while to furnish a sketch or
analysis of it.

"The Journey, of which we proceed to describe the course simply," says
the editor of the Itinerary, "had, from Beaumont-sur-Oise to Plombieres,
in Lorraine, nothing sufficiently interesting to detain us . . . we
must go as far, as Basle, of which we have a description, acquainting us
with its physical and political condition at that period, as well as with
the character of its baths. The passage of Montaigne through Switzerland
is not without interest, as we see there how our philosophical traveller
accommodated himself everywhere to the ways of the country. The hotels,
the provisions, the Swiss cookery, everything, was agreeable to him; it
appears, indeed, as if he preferred to the French manners and tastes
those of the places he was visiting, and of which the simplicity and
freedom (or frankness) accorded more with his own mode of life and
thinking. In the towns where he stayed, Montaigne took care to see the
Protestant divines, to make himself conversant with all their dogmas. He
even had disputations with them occasionally.

"Having left Switzerland he went to Isne, an imperial then on to Augsburg
and Munich. He afterwards proceeded to the Tyrol, where he was agreeably
surprised, after the warnings which he had received, at the very slight
inconveniences which he suffered, which gave him occasion to remark that
he had all his life distrusted the statements of others respecting
foreign countries, each person's tastes being according to the notions of
his native place; and that he had consequently set very little on what he