PATERFAMILIAS's DIARY OF EVERY-BODY'S TOUR. HOLIDAY feelings, young-day thoughts, hope, expectancy, enterprize and energy, added to the evil accident of rainy weather to begin with; the joyfulness of going, and the bustle of getting away; these, with fifteen miles of posting, dampish baggage, and universal good temper in spite of difficulties, made up the spirit and the matter of our initiatory stage of travel. : That same evil accident of bad weather (may some good to somebody at all events come out of it!) is the main-spring of my present purpose for, finding myself rain-bound at the Rhine-falls in the magnificent Hotel Weber, this present mid-day of August, '55, I have, for very idleness, resolved to make known to you the pleasant every-day I spend, and have some B while been spending. Though Murray's inimitable Guides have deservedly taken the wind out of the sail [some spell it sale] of all manner of journals,-though Sterne has exhausted the sentimental, Thackeray the humourous, Forbes the scientific, and () the dull, I will be rash enough to hazard a few cordial candid notes of travel, on a route that you have gone yourself, or some day will go-and trust that in charity no less than justice you will not bid me occupy that last intolerable blank. Be it known, however, to your amiability, that so far from doing this Scriblerus deed of any malice prepense, I originally had intended nothing of the sort; tired out of pen and ink, weary of books, and sick of criticism: but, the cacoëthes claims its way, and the Sosii (bless their classical liberality!) are so tempting always, and friends so expectant, and travelling en paterfamilias so far from inexpensive, that really one had much better not have a will of one's own. Now you know how this booklet comes about. I have no wish to pester any one with personals, nor to trouble him with trivials, further than my petty subject-matter makes a bad necessity still less do I desire to be deep, which is another monosyllable for dull: of course I might in this afterthought publication suppose I could very much mend matters by recolouring and amplification; but, to say truth, the freshness of a genuine daily journal is a far less intolerable thing than any illjudged attempt at re-written stale philosophy, and cold generalizing afterwards; impressions of things written at the time and on the spot, are likelier to be true and graphic than their jumbled memories: neither will I dare to bore your patience with technical architecturals, town and country statistics, or wordy scene painting; nobody ever yet understood a place he had not visited, nor cared for a cathedral off the spot, saving in its memory; and for this, one graphic hint is enough to bring back all the solemn vision. Nothing could be easier, however little honest, than to eke out my meagreness by the fulness of other folk, or to exaggerate adventures, and paint up common facts but all these bookmakings I repudiate: preferring to tell you, without intrusion and pretension, what in some few weeks of ordinary touring I have thought best worth its pains: my recital may remind you of a pleasant past, or excite you to a happy future; I have no wonders to tell of, but what you yourself either have seen or may see; but I shall have, doubtless, the satisfaction of proving to your selfcomplacency what is inevitable to every tra : |