I have not sought, ’tis true, the Holy Land,
As full of texts as Cuddie Headrigg’s mother,
      The Bible in one hand,
And my own commonplace-book in the other—­
But you have been to Palestine—­alas! 
Some minds improve by travel, others, rather,
    Resemble copper wire, or brass,
Which gets the narrower by going farther! 
Worthless are all such Pilgrimages—­very! 
If Palmers at the Holy Tomb contrive
The human heats and rancor to revive
That at the Sepulchre they ought to bury. 
A sorry sight it is to rest the eye on,
To see a Christian creature graze at Sion,
Then homeward, of the saintly pasture full,
Rush bellowing, and breathing fire and smoke,
At crippled Papistry to butt and poke,
Exactly as a skittish Scottish bull
Hunts an old woman in a scarlet cloak!

Why leave a serious, moral, pious home,
Scotland, renown’d for sanctity of old,
Far distant Catholics to rate and scold
For—­doing as the Romans do at Rome? 
With such a bristling spirit wherefore quit
The Land of Cakes for any land of wafers,
About the graceless images to flit,
And buzz and chafe importunate as chafers,
Longing to carve the carvers to Scotch collops?—­
People who hold such absolute opinions
Should stay at home, in Protestant dominions,
    Not travel like male Mrs. Trollopes.

Gifted with noble tendency to climb,
    Yet weak at the same time,
Faith is a kind of parasitic plant,
That grasps the nearest stem with tendril-rings;
And as the climate and the soil may grant,
So is the sort of tree to which it clings. 
Consider then, before, like Hurlothrumbo
You aim your club at any creed on earth,
That, by the simple accident of birth,
You might have been High Priest to Mumbo Jumbo.

For me—­thro’ heathen ignorance perchance,
Not having knelt in Palestine,—­I feel
None of that griffinish excess of zeal,
Some travellers would blaze with here in France. 
Dolls I can see in virgin-like array,
Nor for a scuffle with the idols hanker
Like crazy Quixote at the puppet’s play,
If their “offence be rank,” should mine be rancor? 
Mild light, and by degrees, should be the plan
To cure the dark and erring mind;
But who would rush at a benighted man,
And give him two black eyes for being blind?

Suppose the tender but luxuriant hop
Around a canker’d stem should twine,
What Kentish boor would tear away the prop
So roughly as to wound, nay, kill the bine? 
The images, ’tis true, are strangely dress’d,
With gauds and toys extremely out of season;
The carving nothing of the very best,
The whole repugnant to the eye of reason,
Shocking to Taste, and to Fine Arts a treason—­
Yet ne’er o’erlook in bigotry of sect
One truly Catholic, one common form,
    At which uncheck’d
  All Christian hearts may kindle or keep warm.