manent, of travel. Those who cannot pursue
this method will achieve most by laying aside state, conversing with the
people they fall in with, and diverging from the high road as much as
possible.

Nothing need be said on a matter so obvious as the necessity of
understanding the language of the people visited. Some familiarity with
it must be attained before anything else can be done. It seems to be
unquestioned, however, that a good deal of the unsociability of the
English abroad is owing not so much to contempt of their neighbours, as
to the natural pride which makes them shrink from attempting what they
cannot do well. I am confident that we say much less than we feel about
the awkwardness and constraint of our first self-committals to a foreign
language. It is impossible but that every one must feel the weight of
the penalty of making himself ridiculous at every step, and of
presenting a kind of false appearance of himself to every one with whom
he converses. A German gentleman in America, who has exactly that right
degree of self-respect which enabled him to set strenuously about
learning English, of which he did not understand a word, and who
mastered it so completely as to lecture in faultless English at the end
of two years, astonished a party of friends one day, persuaded as they
were that they perfectly knew him, and that the smooth and deliberate
flow of his beautiful language was a consequence of the calmness of his
temper, and the philosophical character of his mind. A German woman with
children came begging to the house while the party were at their
dessert. The professor caught her tones when the door of the dining-room
was open; he rushed into the hall, presently returned for a dish or two,
and emptied the gingerbread, and other material of the dessert, into her
lap. The company went out to see, and found the professor transformed;
he was talking with a rapidity and vehemence which they had never
supposed him capable of; and one of the party told me how sorry she
felt, and has felt ever since, to think of the state of involuntary
disguise in which he is living among those who would know him best.
Difference of language is undeniably a cause of great suffering and
difficulty, magnificent and incalculable as are its uses. It is no
exception to the general rule that every great good involves some evil.

Happily, however, the difficulty may be presently so far surmounted as
not to interfere with the object o