The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon | Page 7

would I
gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the
ends of the earth!
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague
inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more
decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been
merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek
elsewhere its gratification, for on no country had the charms of nature
been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, her oceans of liquid
silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming
with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their
solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her
broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless
forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies,
kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;--no,
never need an American ok beyond his own country for the sublime
and beautiful of natural scenery.
But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical association.
There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly
cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom.
My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the
accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of the
times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to
wander over the scenes of renowned achievement--to tread, as it were,
in the footsteps of antiquity--to loiter about the ruined castle--to
meditate on the falling tower--to escape, in short, from the
commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the
shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the earth.

We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has an
ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been
almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there is
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 great
men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that
all animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A
great man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great
man of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and
in this idea I was confirmed by observing the comparative importance
and swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I
was assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit
this land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I
am degenerated.
It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion
gratified. I have wandered through different countries and witnessed
many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied
them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze
with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of
one print-shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of
beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by
the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to
travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with
sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my
friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have
taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me, at finding how
my idle humor has led me astray from the great object studied by every
regular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal
disappointment with an unlucky landscape-painter, who had travelled
on the Continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had
sketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketch-book was
accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins;
but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coliseum, the cascade of
Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not a single glacier or volcano in
his whole collection.

THE VOYAGE.
Ships, ships, I will descrie you Amidst the main, I will come and try
you, What you are protecting, And projecting, What's your end and aim.
One goes abroad for merchandise and trading, Another stays to keep
his country from invading, A third is coming home with rich and
wealthy lading. Hallo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go? OLD POEM.
To an American visiting Europe, the long voyage he has to make is an
excellent preparative. The temporary