Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 1 | Page 2

the benefit of tourists. If they do, it is to
compile guide-books and describe automobile trips. In any search for
adequate descriptions of scenes and places, we can not long depend on
present-day writers, but must hark back to those of the last century.
There we shall find Washington Irving's pen busily at work for us, and
the pens of others, who make up a noble company. The writings of
these are still fresh and they fit our purposes as no others do.
Fortunately for us, the things in Europe that really count for the
cultivated traveler do not change with the passing of years or centuries.
The experience which Goethe had in visiting the crater of Vesuvius in
1787 is just about such as an American from Kansas City, or Cripple
Creek, would have in 1914. In the old Papal Palace of Avignon,
Dickens, seventy years ago, saw essentially the same things that a
keen-eyed American tourist of today would see. When Irving, more

than a century ago, made his famous pilgrimage to Westminster Abbey,
he saw about everything that a pilgrim from Oklahoma would see
today.
It is believed that these volumes, alike in their form and contents,
present a mass of selected literature such as has not been before offered
to readers at one time and in one place.
FRANCIS W. HALSEY.

INTRODUCTION TO VOLS. I AND II
Great Britain and Ireland
The tourist who has embarked for the British Isles lands usually at
Liverpool, Fishguard, or Plymouth, whence a special steamer-train
takes him in a few hours to London. In landing at Plymouth, he has
passed, outside the harbor, Eddystone, most famous of lighthouses, and
has seen waters in which Drake overthrew the Armada of Philip II.
Once the tourist leaves the ship he is conscious of a new environment.
Aboard the tender (if there be one) he will feel this, in the custom house
formalities, when riding on the steamer-train, on stepping to the station
platform at his destination, when riding in the tidy taxicab, at the door
and in the office of his hotel, in his well-ordered bedroom, and at his
initial meal. First of all, he will appreciate the tranquility, the
unobtrusiveness, the complete efficiency, with which service is
rendered him by those employed to render it.
When Lord Nelson, before beginning the battle of Trafalgar, said to his
officers and sailors that England expected "every man to do his duty,"
the remark was merely one of friendly encouragement and sympathy,
rather than of stern discipline, because every man on board that fleet of
ships already expected to do his duty. Life in England is a school in
which doing one's duty becomes a fundamental condition of staying "in
the game." Not alone sailors and soldiers know this, and adjust their
lives to it, but all classes of public and domestic servants--indeed, all
men are subject to it, whether servants or barristers, lawmakers or
kings.
Emerging from his hotel for a walk in the street, the tourist, even tho
his visit be not the first, will note the ancient look of things. Here are
buildings that have survived for two, or even five, hundred years, and
yet they are still found fit for the purposes to which they are put. Few

buildings are tall, the "skyscraper" being undiscoverable. On great and
crowded thoroughfares one may find buildings in plenty that have only
two, or at most three, stories, and their windows small, with panes of
glass scarcely more than eight by ten. The great wall mass and dome of
St. Paul's, the roof and towers of Westminster Abbey, unlike the lone
spire of old Trinity in New York, still rise above all the buildings
around them as far as the eye can reach, just about as they did in the
days of Sir Christopher Wren.
Leaving a great thoroughfare for a side street, a stone's throw may
bring one to a friend's office, in one of those little squares so common
in the older parts of London. How ancient all things here may seem to
him, the very street doorway an antiquity, and so the fireplace within,
the hinges and handles of the doors. From some upper rear window he
may look out on an extension roof of solid lead, that has survived,
sound and good, after the storms of several generations, and beyond
may look into an ancient burial ground, or down upon the grass-plots
and ample walks around a church (perchance the Temple Church), and
again may see below him the tomb of Oliver Goldsmith.
In America we look for antiquities to Boston, with her Long Wharf, or
Faneuil Hall; to New York, with her Fraunccs Tavern and Van
Cortlandt Manor House; to Jamestown with her lone, crumbling church
tower; to the