“Yes, but I could not have talked about Italy.  I never have a chance of going abroad.”

“You do not know when you may go, and if you went to-morrow it would be a case of ‘No Eyes.’  You do not know an interesting piece of architecture when you see it, you would not know what pictures to look for, you would not know the history of the places you went to, and, in short, you would miss nine-tenths of the best points, for want of knowing they were there.”

“Yes; I might read up countries, but it is so unlikely that I should ever see them, that it does not seem much use to read up for nothing.”

“Well, supposing that you did not go, but that you had read books on Italian Art, and made out a list of the pictures you wanted to see at each great town—­Florence, Venice, Rome, Siena—­and knew about each painter, his history, his style, and photographs of his works, and copied out under each picture what good critics had said of it, or at least put a reference to the book where it was mentioned (e.g. Kingsley’s description of Bellini’s Doge; Browning on Fra Lippo Lippi’s Coronation of the Virgin; Ruskin’s best descriptions); and if you looked out all the famous men of each town, and knew their history, and what parts of the town were sacred to them; if you studied the buildings of each town, looked up its architecture, and tried to draw it from photographs and illustrations, and then hunted out all the poetry and novels about each place, and drew out a sketch of its history, marking where the local history of the town dovetailed into larger European interests, and specially where it touched England—­I think, after this, you would enjoy meeting any one from Italy almost as much as if you had been there, and you would not feel you had read up for nothing.  I should take a fresh country every year, and make believe that you were going to it next summer, and that you were getting ready to be ‘Eyes,’ and not ‘No Eyes,’ while there.  You would have got the spirit of the country by this, far more than ninety-nine out of a hundred of those who go to it in the flesh.  You are leaving school at eighteen, and by the time you are five and twenty, i.e. before you are fully grown up, you might have thus visited Italy, France, Germany, Spain, America, India, which would make you a fairly cultivated person.”

“But it is so hard to get books; I can read Ruskin while I am with you, and when I am with Uncle Charles I could find some of the others I should want, but I can’t get hold of a course of reading at home.”

“But if you have such a large peg as Italy on which to hang your reading, you can always find something which bears on it—­you can borrow an odd book here and there, or pick up bits in a stray magazine; several of the books you would want are cheap to buy, and, if you keep a list of them, you will be surprised to find from what odd quarters they turn up.  People have a way of saying, ‘Oh, do recommend me a