I am of this mind with Homer, that as the shat crept out of her shel was tursoones into a toad I and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne try is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faio alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he , not where he would.--LYLYS EUPHUES.
I was always fond of visiting new ses, and strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery intn parts and unknions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extehe range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding try. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been itted, host seen. I visited the neighb villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and s, and versing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summers day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra inita, and was astoo ?nd how vast a globe I inhabited.
This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in dev their tents, I ed the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in ?her, and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague ination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own try; and had I been merely a lover of ?ne sery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its grati?cation, for on no try had the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, her os of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn sileo the o; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magni?ce; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;--no, never need an Ameri ok beyond his own try for the sublime aiful of natural sery.
But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the re?s of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of a and local y native try was full of youthful promise; Europe was ri the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of the times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a icle. I loo wander over the ses of renowned achievement--to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity--to loiter about the ruined castle--to meditate on the falling tower--to escape, in short, from the onplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, besides all this, an ear desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, reat men in Ameriot a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they cast me;