last century.
There we shall find Washington Irving's pen busily at work for us, and the
pens of others, who make up a noble company. The writings of these are
still fresh and they fit our purposes as no others do.

Fortunately for us, the things in Europe that really count for the
cultivated traveler do not change with the passing of years or centuries.
The experience which Goethe had in visiting the crater of Vesuvius in 1787
is just about such as an American from Kansas City, or Cripple Creek,
would have in 1914. In the old Papal Palace of Avignon, Dickens, seventy
years ago, saw essentially the same things that a keen-eyed American
tourist of today would see. When Irving, more than a century ago, made his
famous pilgrimage to Westminster Abbey, he saw about everything that a
pilgrim from Oklahoma would see today.

It is believed that these volumes, alike in their form and contents,
present a mass of selected literature such as has not been before offered
to readers at one time and in one place.

FRANCIS W. HALSEY.

INTRODUCTION TO VOLS. I AND II

Great Britain and Ireland

The tourist who has embarked for the British Isles lands usually at
Liverpool, Fishguard, or Plymouth, whence a special steamer-train takes
him in a few hours to London. In landing at Plymouth, he has passed,
outside the harbor, Eddystone, most famous of lighthouses, and has seen
waters in which Drake overthrew the Armada of Philip II.

Once the tourist leaves the ship he is conscious of a new environment.
Aboard the tender (if there be one) he will feel this, in the custom house
formalities, when riding on the steamer-train, on stepping to the station
platform at his destination, when riding in the tidy taxicab, at the door
and in the office of his hotel, in his well-ordered bedroom, and at his
initial meal. First of all, he will appreciate the tranquility, the
unobtrusiveness, the complete efficiency, with which service is rendered
him by those employed to render it.

When Lord Nelson, before beginning the battle of Trafalgar, said to his
officers and sailors that England expected "every man to do his duty," the
remark was merely one of friendly encouragement and sympathy, rather than
of stern discipline, because every man on board that fleet of ships
already expected to do his duty. Life in England is a school in which
doing one's duty becomes a fundamental condition of staying "in the game."
Not alone sailors and soldiers know t