In setting out on a party of pleasure,
the first consideration always is where we shall go to; in taking a
solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way.
"The mind is its own place;" nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of
our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well to works of
art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean
_eclat_--showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance,
"With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd"--
descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles
and stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the Bodleian; and
at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Ciceroni that attended us, and
that pointed, in vain with his wand to commonplace beauties in matchless
pictures.--As another exception to the above reasoning, I should not
feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without a
companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my own
language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman
to foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance of social
sympathy to carry it off.
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