traveller was to discover (or where that failed, to invent) all that he possibly can to the disadvantage of the country he visits; and he is so scrupulous a censor of individual manners that he has no eyes left for national characteristics.  Another striking difference between the older traveller and his modern successor is that the observer and the object to be observed seem to have reversed their relations to each other, so that the man, with his sensations, prejudices, and annoyances, fills up the greater part of the book, while the foreign country becomes merely incidental, a sort of canvas, on which his own portrait is to be painted for the instruction of his readers.  Pliny used to say that something was to be learned from the worst book; and accordingly let us be thankful to the voyagers of the last thirty years that they have taught us where we can get the toughest steak and the coldest coffee which this world offers to the diligent seeker after wisdom, and have made us intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of the fleas, if with those of none of the other dwellers in every corner of the globe.  Such interesting particulars, to be sure, may claim a kind of classic authority in Horace’s journey to Brundusium; but perhaps a gnat or a frog that kept Horace awake may fairly assume a greater historical importance than would be granted to similar tormentors of Brown, Jones, and Robinson.  Were it not for Mr. Olmsted, we should conclude the Arthur-Young type of traveller to be extinct, and that people go abroad merely for an excuse to write about themselves,—­it is so much easier to write a clever book than a solid one.  The plan of Montaigne, who wrote his travels round himself without stirring beyond his library, was as much wiser and cheaper as the result was more entertaining.

But, apart from the self-consciousness and impertinence which detract so much from the value of most recent books of travel, it may be doubted whether, since the French Revolution gave birth to the Caliban of Democracy, there has been a tourist without political bias toward one side or the other; and now that the “Special Correspondent” has been invented, whose business it is to be one-sided, if possible, and at all events entertaining, the last hope of rational information from anywhere would seem to be cut off.  And of all travellers, the Englishman is apt to be the worst.  What Fuller said of him two centuries ago is still in the main true,—­that, “though some years abroad, he is never out of England.”  He carries with him an ideal England, made up of all that is good, great, refined, and, above all, “in easy circumstances,” by which to measure the short-comings of other less-favored nations.  He may have dined contentedly for years at the “Cock” or the “Mitre,” but he must go first to Paris or New York to be astonished at dirt or to miss napkins.  He may have been the life-long victim of the London cabby, but he first becomes aware of extortion as he struggles with the porters of Avignon