ordinary objects and scenes, on arriving in Europe, are full of
strange matter and interesting novelty. England is as classic ground
to an American as Italy is to an Englishman; and old London teems with
as much historical association as mighty Rome.

Indeed, it is difficult to describe the whimsical medley of ideas that
throng upon his mind, on landing among English scenes. He, for the
first time, sees a world about which he has been reading and thinking
in every stage of his existence. The recollected ideas of infancy,
youth, and manhood; of the nursery, the school, and the study, come
swarming at once upon him; and his attention is distracted between
great and little objects; each of which, perhaps, awakens an equally
delightful train of remembrances.

But what more especially attracts his notice, are those peculiarities
which distinguish an old country and an old state of society from a
new one. I have never yet grown familiar enough with the crumbling
monuments of past ages, to blunt the intense interest with which I at
first beheld them. Accustomed always to scenes where history was, in a
manner, in anticipation; where every thing in art was new and
progressive, and pointed to the future rather than to the past; where,
in short, the works of man gave no ideas but those of young existence,
and prospective improvement; there was something inexpressibly
touching in the sight of enormous piles of architecture, gray with
antiquity, and sinking into-decay. I cannot describe the mute but
deep-felt enthusiasm with which I have contemplated a vast monastic
ruin, like Tintern Abbey, buried in the bosom of a quiet valley, and
shut up from the world, as though it had existed merely for itself; or
a warrior pile, like Conway Castle, standing in stern loneliness on
its rocky height, a mere hollow yet threatening phantom of departed
power. They spread a grand, and melancholy, and, to me, an unusual
charm over the landscape; I, for the first time, beheld signs of
national old age, and empire's decay, and proofs of the transient and
perishing glories of art, amidst the ever-springing and reviving
fertility of nature.

But, in fact, to me every thing was full of matter; the footsteps of
history were every where to be traced; and poetry had breathed over
and sanctified the land. I experienced the delightful freshness of
feeling of a child, to whom every thing is new. I pictured to myself a
set of inhabitants and a mode of life f