curiosity, as
their enemies alleged, was the motive for their encountering perils by
land and water. Indeed we recollect only three travellers, either among
the Greeks or Romans, who can properly be considered as journeying for
pleasure. These were Herodotus--the prince of tourists, past, present,
or to come,--Paullus AEmilius, and Caesar Germanicus.

Herodotus, there is reason to suspect, did not himself penetrate far into
Asia, but gathered many of his stories from the merchants and mariners
who frequented the wine-shops of Ephesus and Smyrna. Considering the
sources of his information, and the license of invention accorded to
travellers in all ages, the Halicarnassian was reasonably sceptical: and
generally warns his readers when he is going to tell them "a bouncer," by
the words "so at least they told me," or "so the story goes." Paullus
AEmilius travelled like a modern antiquary and connoisseur. And for
beholding the master-pieces of Grecian art in their original splendour
and in their proper local habitations, never had tourist better
opportunities. A negotiation was pending between the Achaean League and
the Roman Commonwealth; and since the preliminaries were rather dull, and
Flaminius felt himself bored by the doubts and ceremonies of the
delegates, he left them in the lurch to draw up their treaty, and took a
holiday tour himself in the Peloponnesus. At that time not a single
painting, statue, or bas-relief had been carried off to Italy. The Roman
villas were decorated with the designs of Etrurian artists alone, or, at
the most, had imported their sculpture and picture galleries from Thurii
and Tarentum. Flaminius therefore gazed upon the entire mass of Hellenic
art; and the only thing he, unfortunately for us, neglected, was to keep
a journal, and provide for its being handed down to posterity.

Germanicus, who had beheld many of these marvels in the Forum and Palaces
of Rome--for the Roman generals resembled the late Marshal Soult in the
talent of appropriating what they admired--reserved his curiosity for
Egypt alone, and traversed from Alexandria to Syene the entire valley of
the Nile, listening complacently to all the legends which the priests
deemed fitting to rehearse to Roman ears. He was of course treated with
marked attention. Memnon's statue sounded its loudest chord at the first
touch of the morning ray; the priests, in their ceremonial habiliments,
read to him the inscriptions on the wa