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How to Enjoy Travelling.

when we travel. Then the ignorant, unobservant man sees without seeing. To him the Forum at Rome is a shabby plot, with shabbier ruins and bullock-carts about it. It touches no store of learning, kindles no dead history within him. In travel, we find the value of accumulated facts, which otherwise would probably lie barren in our memories. Even the dry memories of school-lessons give out a charm to a classical route, which makes us forgive the dreary hours we spent over them. It is all very well, too, to laugh at bookstudents of nature, but they carry that about with them which gives an interest to every flower, cloud, and stone they see. They see the object, and then, by the magic of association, the true beauty, fitness, history, which surround and accompany it, reveal themselves. A leaf or a bird is but a letter in the great book, which is read only by those who can put letters together; that is, who have the faculty of Association.

( 221 )

SIGHT-SEEING.

VERY country gentleman came up lately to visit a London friend of

mine; my friend trotted him about the streets, got him safely over crossings, and, among other places, took him to the top of St. Paul's. While they were looking down upon the town, the visitor, envying one who had a sight so cheap and grand within easy reach, said to my friend :-"I suppose you often come up here."

This, I take it, is what many of our impulsive country cousins feel when they visit town. What the purple moors and shade-mottled lanes are to us, sick of gas, stucco, and policemen, the shilling-sights are to them. They leave the fresh green of the beech, the lawn, and the nightingale, for Christy's Minstrels and the Exhibitions. Nature's Royal Academy and the May meetings of the summer birds have no chance against the moving spectacles of Regent Street and the voices of Exeter Hall.

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Crowds of Pictures.

Our friends arrive from the station brimful of excitement, with lists of things to be done and seen, compiled for the last six weeks out of the newspapers. They know the different titles of the Exhibitions, and where they may be found. For my part, I never can be sure of the difference between the Old and New Water-colour. They both seem very bright to me. Now a days, however, one's power of distinguishing among the pictures of the season is sorely tried by their dispersion. Beside the bona fide collections and galleries—and he must be a sorry artist who cannot get any one of the rival juries to hang him-single works are exhibited here and there half over London. There is, however, much to be said for this arrangement. What can be more perplexing to the sight-seer than three or four rooms full of pictures? Their number palls the appetite, and chokes the digestion. As for myself, though I like paintings as much as most men, my first impulse, on entering the Academy, is to shade my eyes; or, when I have looked well into two or three works, to shut them, and carry the impression out of doors carefully, lest some "Portrait of a Gentleman" should dissipate it altogether. Depend upon it, this exhibition of single works is a sensible plan. One

The Company at Exhibitions.

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is glad, nevertheless, on reading the Times, to learn that some are occasionally safe out of sight in the provinces. It is pleasant to reflect on the sensation produced in those parts, when we stumble on the curt announcement, "Eastward Ho!' is at Penzance."

If you can get over the sense of interruption, you will find the crowds at such a place as the Royal Academy not without their interest. Notice the way in which people mar the supposed object of their visit by exchanging salutations, looking out for friends, or watching for a vacant spot on the sparse seats, where they may rest their aching backs, and sink down in a sea of crinoline. It is curious to listen to the comments of sight-seers at an exhibition. Many, if not most, are struck by some peculiarity in the picture which the artist, if a true one, would perhaps have never expressed, if he could have helped it, and would retract on reflection.

Some of the remarks made upon Holman Hunt's "Light of the World," when it was first exhibited, were painful, and yet suggestive. I waited once for a considerable time by it, and watched its effect. Several looked till you could see their eyes fill, and then passed on in befitting silence. Others, mostly in black satin

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Vulgar Criticism.

vests, criticised aloud. "Hollo! this is a priest, isn't it?" The picture had not missed him altogether. "What is he doing?” asked another. Some said:"How pretty!" One detected Puseyism, and walked by with a sniff. Far different was the critique of a genuine dustman I once heard in the National Gallery, before the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian. "Look here, Bill!" he whispered to his mate with genuine respect-" His eye is steadfast, but his soul is stirring"-and then the two gazed long and steadfastly without another word. They had souls above Madame Tussaud.

The cook in Punch, who came into her young mistress's studio, and praised the performance on her easel with " Lawk-a-daisy, Miss Mary, if that beant like wax-work a'most," gave a true touch of vulgar taste.

But why should we despise a taste because it is vulgar? Would you not gratify an ass with thistles, even if he sniffed his dislike of nightingale sauce? Who among the crowds that pour along the British Museum on Whitmonday take in the meaning and the value of the sights they see? Would you remove even the mummies, though they do not solemnise the gaping excursionist? He does not think of them as dead. He does not associate the