Our Hundred Days in Europe

Hundred Days in Europe, by
Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Title: Our Hundred Days in Europe
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes

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[Illustration: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82.
From a painting by Sarah W. Whitman]
OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE
BY
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

To
MY DAUGHTER AMELIA
(MRS. TURNER SARGENT)
MY FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED COMPANION
THIS OUTLINE OF OUR SUMMER EXCURSION

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

CONTENTS.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTORY
A PROSPECTIVE VISIT

OUR HUNDRED DAYS IN EUROPE.
CHAPTER
I.
THE VOYAGE.--LIVERPOOL.--CHESTER.--LONDON.--EPSOM
II. EPSOM.--LONDON.--WINDSOR
III. LONDON.--ISLE OF
WIGHT.--CAMBRIDGE.--OXFORD.--YORK.--EDINBURGH
IV. STRATFORD-ON-AVON.--GREAT
MALVERN.--TEWKESBURY.--BATH.--SALISBURY.
--STONEHENGE
V. STONEHENGE.--SALISBURY.--OLD
SARUM.--BEMERTON.--BRIGHTON
VI. LONDON
VII. BOULOGNE.--PARIS.--LONDON.--LIVERPOOL.--THE
HOMEWARD PASSAGE
VIII. GENERAL IMPRESSIONS.--MISCELLANEOUS

OBSERVATIONS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
* * * * *
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82. From a
painting by Sarah W. Whitman
ROBERT BROWNING
MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL
PLACE DE LA CONCORDE

INTRODUCTORY.
A PROSPECTIVE VISIT.
* * * * *
After an interval of more than fifty years, I propose taking a second
look at some parts of Europe. It is a Rip Van Winkle experiment which
I am promising myself. The changes wrought by half a century in the
countries I visited amount almost to a transformation. I left the England
of William the Fourth, of the Duke of Wellington, of Sir Robert Peel;
the France of Louis Philippe, of Marshal Soult, of Thiers, of Guizot. I
went from Manchester to Liverpool by the new railroad, the only one I
saw in Europe. I looked upon England from the box of a stage-coach,
upon France from the coupé of a diligence, upon Italy from the cushion
of a carrozza. The broken windows of Apsley House were still boarded
up when I was in London. The asphalt pavement was not laid in Paris.
The Obelisk of Luxor was lying in its great boat in the Seine, as I
remember it. I did not see it erected; it must have been an exciting

scene to witness, the engineer standing underneath, so as to be crushed
by the great stone if it disgraced him by falling in the process. As for
the dynasties which have overlaid each other like Dr. Schliemann's
Trojan cities, there is no need of moralizing over a history which
instead of Finis is constantly ending with What next?
With regard to the changes in the general conditions of society and the
advance in human knowledge, think for one moment what fifty years
have done! I have often imagined myself escorting some wise man of
the past to our Saturday Club, where we often have distinguished
strangers as our guests. Suppose there sat by me, I will not say Sir Isaac
Newton, for he has been too long away from us, but that other great
man, whom Professor Tyndall names as next to him in intellectual
stature, as he passes along the line of master minds of his country, from
the days of Newton to our own,--Dr. Thomas Young, who died in 1829.
Would he or I be the listener, if we were side by side? However humble
I might feel in such a presence, I should be so clad in the grandeur of
the new discoveries, inventions, ideas, I had to impart to him that I
should seem to myself like the ambassador of an Emperor. I should tell
him of the ocean steamers, the railroads that spread themselves like
cobwebs over the civilized and half-civilized portions of the earth, the
telegraph and