They are as if they belonged to one club.

There is also a negative value in these arts.  Their chief use to the youth is, not amusement, but to be known for what they are, and not to remain to him occasions of heartburn.  We are full of superstitions.  Each class fixes its eyes on the advantages it has not:  the refined, on rude strength; the democrat, on birth and breeding.  One of the benefits of a college-education is, to show the boy its little avail.  I knew a leading man in a leading city, who, having set his heart on an education at the university and missed it, could never quite feel himself the equal of his own brothers who had gone thither.  His easy superiority to multitudes of professional men could never quite countervail to him this imaginary defect.  Balls, riding, wine-parties, and billiards pass to a poor boy for something fine and romantic, which they are not; and a free admission to them on an equal footing, if it were possible, only once or twice, would be worth ten times its cost, by undeceiving him.

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places.  For the most part, only the light characters travel.  Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?  I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice.  I think there is a restlessness in our people which argues want of character.  All educated Americans, first or last, go to Europe,—­perhaps because it is their mental home, as the invalid habits of this country might suggest.  An eminent teacher of girls said, “The idea of a girl’s education is whatever qualifies them for going to Europe.”  Can we never extract this tape-worm of Europe from the brain of our country-men?  One sees very well what their fate must be.  He that does not fill a place at home cannot abroad.  He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd.  You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home?  The stuff of all countries is just the same.  Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milkpans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish?  What is true anywhere is true everywhere.  And let him go where he will, he can find only so much beauty or worth as he carries.

Of course, for some men travel may be useful.  Naturalists, discoverers, and sailors are born.  Some men are made for couriers, exchangers, envoys, missionaries, bearers of despatches, as others are for farmers and working-men.  And if the man is of a light and social turn, and Nature has aimed to make a legged and winged creature, framed for locomotion, we must follow her hint, and furnish him with that breeding which gives currency as sedulously as with that which gives worth.  But let us not be pedantic, but allow to travel its full effect.  The boy