One tracks them to their lair and lo! there is another one
lurking in the background, a reason for a reason.
The craving to be in contact with beauty and antiquity, the desire for
self-expression, for physical well-being under that drenching sunshine,
which while it lasts, one curses lustily; above all, the pleasure of
memory and reconstruction at a distance. Yes; herein lies, methinks, the
secret; the reason for the reason. Reconstruction at a distance.... For
a haze of oblivion is formed by lapse of time and space; a kindly haze
which obliterates the thousand fretting annoyances wherewith the
traveller's path in every country is bestrewn. He forgets them; forgets
that weltering ocean of unpleasantness and remembers only its sporadic
islets - those moments of calm delight or fiercer joy which he would fain
hold fast for ever. He does not come here on account of a certain
fountain which ought never to be cleaned. [21] He comes for the sake of
its mirage, that sunny phantom which will rise up later, out of some
November fog in another land. Italy is a delightful place to remember,
to think and talk about. And is it not the same with England? Let us go
there as a tourist - only as a tourist. How attractive one finds its
conveniences, and even its conventionalities, provided one knows, for an
absolute certainty, that one will never be constrained to dwell among
them.
What lovely things one could say about England, in Timbuktu!
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