t
looks diplomatic to be peremptory, and he has no time for trifling.

Truly, Chevalier de L----, thou art a great man--the wandering Jew was
but a type of thee.

[Illustration]

A NUT FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.

Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I
scarcely know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact,
than the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue
the benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers,
and the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the
impressions already received by study. No one sets a higher price on
this than I do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of
tempering one's nationality by the candid comparison of our own
institutions with those of other countries; no one values more highly
the unbiassed frame of mind produced by extending the field of our
observation, and, instead of limiting our experience by the details of
a book, reading from the wide-spread page of human nature itself. So
conscious, indeed, am I of the importance of this, that I look upon
his education as but very partial indeed who has not travelled. It is
not, therefore, against the benefits of seeing the world I would
inveigh--it is rather against the general application of the practice
to the whole class of our countrymen and countrywomen who swarm on the
continent. Unsuited by their tastes--unprepared by previous
information--deeming a passport and a letter of credit all-sufficient
for their purpose--they set out upon their travels. From their
ignorance of a foreign language, their journey is one of difficulty
and embarrassment at every step. They understand little of what they
see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of foreign life have
no palliation, by their being enabled to reason on, and draw
inferences from them. All the sources of information are hermetically
sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to compensate for its
fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of adventure to which
their ignorance has exposed them.

It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done
to the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the
habits of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I
shall merely remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue
are concerned, more mischief is done among the middle class of our
countrymen, than those of a more exalted sph