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to know all
there is to be known, or all that is interesting to know, about the places
we visit. Then, again, our time as a rule being limited, we want the
whole matter --history, antiquities, places of interest in the
neighbourhood, etc. in a nutshell. The brief book serves its purpose
well enough; but it is not thrown away like the newspaper and the

magazines; however cheap and badly got up it may be, it is taken home
to serve another purpose, to be a help to memory, and nobody can have
it until its owner removes himself (but not his possessions) from this
planet; or until the broker seizes his belongings, and guide-books,
together with other books, are disposed of in packages by the
auctioneer.
In all this we see that guide-books are very important to us, and that
there is little or no fault to be found with them, since even the worst
give some guidance and enable us in after times mentally to revisit
distant places. It may then be said that there are really no bad
guide-books, and that those that are good in the highest sense are
beyond praise. A reverential sentiment, which is almost religious in
character, connects itself in our minds with the very name of Murray. It
is, however, possible to make an injudicious use of these books, and by
so doing to miss the fine point of many a pleasure. The very fact that
these books are guides to us and invaluable, and that we readily acquire
the habit of taking them about with us and consulting them at frequent
intervals, comes between us and that rarest and most exquisite
enjoyment to be experienced amidst novel scenes. He that visits a place
new to him for some special object rightly informs himself of all that
the book can tell him. The knowledge may be useful; pleasure is with
him a secondary object. But if pleasure be the main object, it will only
be experienced in the highest degree by him who goes without book
and discovers what old Fuller called the "observables" for himself.
There will be no mental pictures previously formed; consequently what
is found will not disappoint. When the mind has been permitted to
dwell beforehand on any scene, then, however beautiful or grand it may
be, the element of surprise is wanting and admiration is weak. The
delight has been discounted.
My own plan, which may be recommended only to those who go out
for pleasure--who value happiness above useless (otherwise useful)
knowledge, and the pictures that live and glow in memory above
albums and collections of photographs--is not to look at a guide-book
until the place it treats of has been explored and left behind.

The practical person, to whom this may come as a new idea and who
wishes not to waste any time in experiments, would doubtless like to
hear how the plan works. He will say that he certainly wants all the
happiness to be got out of his rambles, but it is clear that without the
book in his pocket he would miss many interesting things: Would the
greater degree of pleasure experienced in the others be a sufficient
compensation? I should say that he would gain more than he would
lose; that vivid interest and pleasure in a few things is preferable to that
fainter, more diffused feeling experienced in the other case. Again, we
have to take into account the value to us of the mental pictures gathered
in our wanderings. For we know that only when a scene is viewed
emotionally, when it produces in us a shock of pleasure, does it become
a permanent possession of the mind; in other words, it registers an
image which, when called up before the inner eye, is capable of
reproducing a measure of the original delight.
In recalling those scenes which have given me the greatest happiness,
the images of which are most vivid and lasting, I find that most of them
are of scenes or objects which were discovered, as it were, by chance,
which I had not heard of, or else had heard of and forgotten, or which I
had not expected to see. They came as a surprise, and in the following
instance one may see that it makes a vast difference whether we do or
do not experience such a sensation.
In the course of a ramble on foot in a remote district I came to a small
ancient town, set in a cuplike depression amidst high wood-grown hills.
The woods were of oak in spring foliage, and against that vivid green I
saw the many-gabled tiled roofs and tall chimneys of the old timbered
houses, glowing red and warm brown in the brilliant sunshine--a scene
of rare beauty,