THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF
I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of hershel was turned eftsoones into a toad I and thereby was forced to make astoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne countryis in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he isfaine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can,not where he would.--LYLY'S EUPHUES.
I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strangecharacters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, andmade many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions ofmy native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolumentof the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of myobservations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about thesurrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famousin history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery hadbeen committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages,and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits andcustoms, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyedone long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence Istretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonishedto find how vast a globe I inhabited.
This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyagesand travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, Ineglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully wouldI wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the partingships, bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gazeafter their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the endsof the earth!
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclinationinto more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. Ivisited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a loverof fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhereits gratification, for on no country had the charms of nature been moreprodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, her oceans of liquid silver; hermountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming withwild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes;her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deeprivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests,where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindlingwith the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;--no, never needan American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful ofnatural scenery.
But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poeticalassociation. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, therefinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint peculiaritiesof ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthfulpromise; Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her veryruins told the history of the times gone by, and every moulderingstone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renownedachievement--to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity--toloiter about the ruined castle--to meditate on the falling tower--toescape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, andlose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of theearth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but hasan ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and beenalmost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for thereis nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one,particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the greatmen of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, thatall animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A greatman of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great manof America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and inthis idea I was confirmed by observing the comparative importance andswelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I wasassured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit thisland of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I amdegenerated.
It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passiongratified. I have wandered through different countries and witnessedmany of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studiedthem with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gazewith which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the windowof one print-shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations ofbeauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes bythe loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern touriststo travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled withsketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of myfriends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I havetaken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at finding howmy idle humor has led me astray from the great object studied by everyregular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equaldisappointment with an unlucky landscape-painter, who had travelled onthe Continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination, hadsketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketch-book wasaccordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins;but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coliseum, the cascadeof Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not a single glacier or volcanoin his whole collection.
The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon Page 3