Nobody could have written this book--a London Review recently said of Longfellow's "Hyperion"--who could have reached the Rhine in a few hours. It needed the ocean, thought the critic, to make the Rhine and Switzerland remote and romantic to the poet. But he forgot "Childe Harold," a book written by an Englishman, which has given to the Rhine and Italy a more romantic glamour for John Bull upon his travels than any book he reads. It is not the distance, it is the imagination susceptible to association which is the secret.
The traveller of to-day is not likely to be affected as his father was by the melancholy melody of Byron; but it is an interesting illustration of the power of his genius that Byron has imposed his interpretation of so many scenes upon the mind of the modern English and American observer. His view makes Italy, as Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of John Kemble made Hamlet. If we stand in the Capitol and look at the Dying Gladiator, we must also see "his young barbarians all at play" upon the Danube. If at Terni we see the Velino "cleave the wave-worn precipice," the Byronic lines murmur along our lips. As we step into the gondola and glide gently upon the Grand Canal, memory keeps time to the measure of the dipping oar with the words whose charm is unexhausted:
"In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And silent rows the songless gondolier."
At "a tomb in Arqua," at "Clarens, sweet Clarens," we are still led, like Dante, by the singing guide. The Guide-book is full of him. The travel-books are full of him. He is familiar almost to commonplace. Who comes to "Belgium's capital" for the first time without listening for "the sound of revelry"? Who goes to the field of Waterloo remembering "the unreturning brave," and does not sigh,
"And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves."
Sitting quietly here in a great land which looks to the future, not to the past, it is pleasant to think of the throngs of travellers who have gone hence for a summer wandering in Europe. Yet so intense is the delight of European travel, so freshly remembered is it when almost another generation of travellers are ready to begin their journey, that the patriarch who goes to the wharf to say farewell to the newer voyagers looks at them with tenderness and pity, and there is even a sadness in his congratulations, not because they are sailing away, but because he cannot believe that they will find what he found, nor possibly enjoy what he enjoyed. These newer voyagers will see a France and a Switzerland and an Italy; they will eat oranges at Sorrento, and gaze upon the Mediterranean from Capri, and hear the fisher's song at Amalfi: but they will not hear and see through the enchantment of lapsed years.
In his lively book of travelling letters Dr. Bellows says that he went up the Nile in a steamer of seventy berths. An ancient mariner of the Nile cannot comprehend it. In a steamer? With paddles or screws whisking the water? And steam blowing off? Making innumerable miles a day? The round trip to Philæ in two weeks, or a week? But how could you see Egypt, or feel it? That slow floating southward upon white wings; the sinking deeper and farther from the world we knew; the sense of infinite strangeness and distance; the weeks passing with no sign of accustomed life; slowly, one by one, the temples, the tombs; in the still days the crew dragging the boat along and singing the wild minor refrain; a voyage of wonder and of dreams--is that Egypt to be seen in a steamer? It is useless to say that you may go in the old way if you choose. You cannot go in the old way, because it is no longer what it was, if there be a newer. You may drive from London to Oxford. But is that going by the old English stage-coach when it was the only way, when the guard wound his horn, and the cherry-nosed coachman threw down the ribbons at each relay, and the neat inns stood smiling with open doors, and tra-la-la sped the nimble team by the park gate and the hawthorn hedge? You may go by sloop from New York to Albany. But is that now the romantic Hudson voyage which it was when it could be made in no other way?
No sensible ancient mariner will quarrel with all this, nor desire to banish the steamer of seventy berths from the Nile. When he shakes a farewell hand with the youth who are going to run up to Rome by train, and are
not going to stop at a certain point upon the Campagna, and run forward to the top of a hill whence they can see far away upon the horizon the faintly outlined dome of St. Peter's--and who are
not going from Leghorn to Florence through the grape harvest, their carriage heaped with the luscious clusters, but are to whiz through Tuscany in an hour or so, the regret in his tone is not personal or selfish, it is for a whole order of things passed away.
Such an ancient mariner would, however, be indeed sorry if he supposed that anybody suspected him of a very common and very odious kind of remark, against which he kindly warns all the throngs of travellers of whom mention has been made. The remark in question may be called the capping remark. Thus one traveller says to another--as Marco Polo to George Sandys--
"You went to Jerusalem?"
"Yes."
"And to Jericho?"
"Yes."
"And to the Jordan?"
"Yes."
"Did you see the white stone on the bottom near where the river flows into the Dead Sea?"
"Well--let me see! I don't exactly seem to remember that I did precisely see that."
"Ah!" replies Marco Polo.
It is a very brief sound, but being interpreted it means, "Then, my dear George Sandys, you might just as well not have seen the Jordan at all." Not that the white stone was famous or worth seeing, but that Marco Polo wished to "rub in" upon George Sandys's mind the conviction that he, Polo, had seen more than he, Sandys, in the same direction.
This capping process sometimes leads to very droll results. Young Green heard Gray and Brown comparing their notes of travel. Each was naturally anxious to have seen and done rather more than the other; but it appeared that each had been in about the same places, and had had very much the same experience.
"Lago Maggiore is a lovely sheet of water," remarked Gray.
"Truly exquisite," replied Brown.
"And Isola Bella is most beautiful," suggested Gray.
"Dear me! dear me!" approvingly assented Brown.
"How high is the statue of San Carlo Borromeo?" asked Gray.
"About sixty feet," answered Brown.
"It's a wonderful prospect from his eye," said Gray.
"Whose eye?" asked Brown.
"San Carlo Borromeo's," replied Gray, whose mind instantly suspected that he had caught the adversary, and who followed up his advantage vigorously and suddenly. "Of course you went up San Carlo?"
"Up San Carlo? You mean the church at--"
"Oh no! the statue on Lago Maggiore."
"Went up the statue! what do you mean?" snapped Brown, foreseeing discomfiture.
"Oh! I thought you probably knew," retorted the triumphant Gray, "that the statue is hollow."
"Oh! ah! yes!" returned Brown, indifferently.
"And you didn't go up?" pressed Gray.
"Not exactly," feebly rejoined Brown.
"Nor sit in his nose?" continued Gray.
"Not exactly," muttered Brown.
"Nor look out of his eyes?" said Gray.
"I thought I wouldn't," murmured Brown, in full retreat.
"Oh!" smiled Gray, with the air of David holding the head of Goliath by the hair, and displaying it to mankind--"oh!"
Young Green heard all this, and he resolved that whatever he did not do when he went to Europe, he would at all hazards sit in the nose of San Carlo Borromeo. The next year he came to Lago Maggiore. He saw the statue. He remembered the conversation and his high resolve, and he essayed the deed. It was fearful. He tore his hands; he tore his clothes; he was half suffocated; and, wedging himself into the nose, he stuck fast, and was only rescued at the peril of his life. When he told Gray afterward, and reminded him of the colloquy with Brown, that experienced traveller laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. "My dear Green," said he, "I never went up the confounded thing; but it was necessary to take Brown down somehow, and I employed the good saint for the purpose." He laughed again to tears; but Mr. Green soberly resolved that he would eschew the capping talk of travel. And he chose the wiser course.
The truth is that Green should not trust too much the tales, nor indeed the regrets, of the ancient mariners.
"For travellers tell no idle tales,
But fools at home believe them."
Certainly when this one remarks that he feels in saying farewell that young Green will never see the Europe that he saw, he has not the remotest idea of dimming his bright hope nor of asserting an advantage. What is it, indeed, but a way of saying that he is no longer the same man he was? If he were, what would be the gain of travel? It is not only an enlargement of the scenery of the mind, not only a richer and more various memory that he has acquired, but a riper experience. He has grown wiser; and perhaps all that he feels when he shakes Green's parting hand is that Green is not so wise as he will one day be.
[The end]
George William Curtis's essay: Grand Tour