After The First Touches Of Enthusiastic
Sentiment, That Represent Real Freshness Of Enjoyment, There Is No
Reaction To Excess In Opposite Extreme.
The young foot traveller
settles down to simple truth, retains his faith in English
character, and reports ill-usage without a word of bitterness.
The great charm of this book is its unconscious expression of the
writer's character. His simple truthfulness presents to us of 1886
as much of the England of 1782 as he was able to see with eyes full
of intelligence and a heart full of kindness. He heard Burke speak
on the death of his friend and patron Lord Rockingham, with sudden
rebuke to an indolent and inattentive house. He heard young Pitt,
and saw how he could fix, boy as he looked, every man's attention.
"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion."
And when the power is so friendly as that of the Pastor Moritz, we
may, if wise, know ourselves better than from a thousand satires,
but if foolish we may let all run into self-praise.
H. M.
CHAPTER I.
On the Thames, 31st May.
At length, my dearest Gedike, I find myself safely landed on the
happy shores of that country, a sight of which has, for many years,
been my most earnest wish; and whither I have so often in
imagination transported myself. A few hours ago the green hills of
England yet swam imperfectly before our eyes, scarcely perceptible
in the distant horizon: they now unfold themselves on either side,
forming as it were a double amphitheatre. The sun bursts through
the clouds, and gilds alternately the shrubs and meadows on the
distant shores, and we now espy the tops of two masts of ships just
peeping above the surface of the deep. What an awful warning to
adventurous men! We now sail close by those very sands (the
Goodwin) where so many unfortunate persons have found their graves.
The shores now regularly draw nearer to each other: the danger of
the voyage is over; and the season for enjoyment, unembittered by
cares, commences. How do we feel ourselves, we, who have long been
wandering as it were, in a boundless space, on having once more
gained prospects that are not without limits! I should imagine our
sensations as somewhat like those of the traveller who traverses the
immeasurable deserts of America, when fortunately he obtains a hut
wherein to shelter himself; in those moments he certainly enjoys
himself; nor does he then complain of its being too small. It is
indeed the lot of man to be always circumscribed to a narrow space,
even when he wanders over the most extensive regions; even when the
huge sea envelops him all around, and wraps him close to its bosom,
in the act, as it were, of swallowing him up in a moment: still he
is separated from all the circumjacent immensity of space only by
one small part, or insignificant portion of that immensity.
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