of it is not much bigger than a
nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined to
county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, making an image voluminous
and vast;--the mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye can
take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a
calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification
of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of
China, to us? An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more
account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of
life: things at a distance are diminished to the size of the
understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend
the texture of our own being only piecemeal. In this way, however, we
remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical
instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in
succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes
all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot as it were
unfold the whole web of our existence; we must pick out the single
threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived and with
which we have intimate associations, every one must have found that the
feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere
anticipation of the actual impression: we remember circumstances,
feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not thought of for years;
but for the time all the rest of the world is forgotten!

To return to the question I have quitted above. I have no objection to
go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in company with a friend or a
party, but rather the contrary, for the former reason reversed. They are
intelligible matters, and will bear talking about. The sentiment here is
not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of
criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian,
picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure,
the first consideration always is where we shall go to; in taking a
solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way.
"The mind is its own place;" nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of
our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well to works of
art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean
_eclat_--showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance,

"With glist