Were it not for Mr. Olmsted, we should conclude the Arthur-Young type of
traveller to be extinct, and that people go abroad merely for an excuse
to write about themselves,--it is so much easier to write a clever book
than a solid one. The plan of Montaigne, who wrote his travels round
himself without stirring beyond his library, was as much wiser and
cheaper as the result was more entertaining.
But, apart from the self-consciousness and impertinence which detract so
much from the value of most recent books of travel, it may be doubted
whether, since the French Revolution gave birth to the Caliban of
Democracy, there has been a tourist without political bias toward one
side or the other; and now that the "Special Correspondent" has been
invented, whose business it is to be one-sided, if possible, and at all
events entertaining, the last hope of rational information from anywhere
would seem to be cut off. And of all travellers, the Englishman is apt
to be the worst. What Fuller said of him two centuries ago is still in
the main true,--that, "though some years abroad, he is never out of
England." He carries with him an ideal England, made up of all that is
good, great, refined, and, above all, "in easy circumstances," by which
to measure the short-comings of other less-favored nations. He may have
dined contentedly for years at the "Cock" or the "Mitre," but he must go
first to Paris or New York to be astonished at dirt or to miss napkins.
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