to remain
on the surface of the earth: it would breed a plague, which would
infect, not a world only, but a universe. It is in this direction that
we are to seek for instruction; and here, if we are able to receive it,
thirty generations are willing to impart to us their dear-bought
experience. Lessons which have cost the world so much are surely worth
learning.

But I do not mean to treat my readers to lectures on history, instead of
chapters on travel. It is not an abstract disquisition on the influence
of religion and government, such as one might compose without stirring
from his own fire-side, which I intend to write. It is a real journey we
are about to undertake. You shall have facts as well as
reflections,--incidents as well as disquisitions. I shall be grave,--as
who would not at the sight of fallen nations?--but "when time shall
serve there shall be smiles." You shall climb the Alps; and when their
tops begin to burn at sunrise, you shall join heart and song with the
music of the shepherd's horn, and the thunder of a thousand torrents, as
they rush headlong down amid crags and pine-forests from the icy
summits. You shall enter, with pilgrim feet, the gates of proud
capitals, where puissant kings once reigned, but have passed away, and
have left no memorial on earth, save a handful of dust in a
stone-coffin, or a half-legible name on some mouldering arch. The solemn
and stirring voice of Monte Viso, speaking from the midst of the Cottian
Alps, will call you from afar to the martyr-land of Europe. You shall
worship with the Waldenses beneath their own Castelluzzo, which covers
with its mighty shadow the ashes of their martyred forefathers, and the
humble sanctuary of their living descendants. You shall count the towns
and campaniles on the broad Lombardy. You shall pass glorious days on
the top of renowned cathedrals, and sit and muse in the face of the
eternal Alps, as the clouds now veil, now reveal, their never-trodden
snows. You shall cross the Lagunes, and see the winged lion of St Mark
soaring serenely amid the bright domes and the ever calm seas of Venice,
where you may list

"The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,
Mellowed by distance, o'er the waters sweep."

You shall travel long sleepless nights in the _diligence_, and be
ferried at day-break over "ancient rivers." You shall tread the
grass-grown streets of Ferrara, and the deserted halls of Bologna, where
the wisdom-loving youth of Europe erst