He remained in Paris until September, working hard at the languages and literatures of France and Italy, and neglecting no opportunity to improve himself.  At that date he started for Geneva on his way to Italy, crossing the Alps by the Simplon.  At Venice he again saw Byron, who was busy, or professed to be, with a plan of visiting this country.  Thence he made his way south to Rome and Naples, spending most of the winter in the former city among very interesting people, such as Bunsen, Niebuhr and Madame de Humboldt.  In the spring of 1818 he went to Spain, and it is interesting to notice how much more vivacious his journal becomes with his entrance into that country.  It seems to have been with real enjoyment that he changed the ease of his earlier journeyings for the hardships of traveling in this comfortless land; and although the inns were miserable, the fare uncertain and meagre at the best, and there were many other afflictions to vex the tourist, he evidently enjoyed this expedition to the full.  On his way from Barcelona to Madrid he had for companions a painter of repute and two officers, and to these he used to read aloud Don Quixote, and, he says, “I assure you this was a pleasure to me such as I have seldom enjoyed, to witness the effect this extraordinary book produces on the people from whose very blood and character it is drawn....  All of them used to beg me to read it to them every time we got into our cart—­like children for toys and sugar-plums.”  In Madrid he studied carefully the language and literature, his tastes and opportunities leading him to lay the solid foundation of what was to be the main work of his life.  The society that he met here was mainly that of the foreign diplomatists, but, agreeable as it was, it did not distract him from his studies or from his observation of the people among whom he was placed.  In a letter to this country he said, “What seems mere fiction and romance in other countries is matter of observation here, and in all that relates to manners Cervantes and Le Sage are historians; for when you have crossed the Pyrenees you have not only passed from one country and climate to another, but you have gone back a couple of centuries in your chronology, and find the people still in that kind of poetical existence which we have not only long since lost, but which we have long since ceased to credit on the reports of our ancestors.”

Although it would be interesting to linger over the passages dealing with Spain, it is perhaps better to turn to his account of leaving it, which he did under the most singular circumstances—­namely, as one of a band of contrabandistas.  Not that he wore a mask and filled his purse by robbing unoffending travelers; instead, he joined this party of accomplished smugglers, who used to carry on the business of smuggling dollars from Seville to Lisbon and bring back English goods in the same way.  For eight days he was in their company, and he says, “I have seldom