The American who, in his own country, is in feverish haste to improve conditions, when he sets foot in Europe becomes the fanatical foe to progress.  The Old World, in his judgment, ought to look old.  He longs to hear the clatter of wooden shoes.  If he had his way he would have laws enacted forbidding peasant folk to change their ancient costumes.  He would preserve every relic of feudalism.  He bitterly laments the division of great estates.  A nobleman’s park with its beautiful idle acres, its deer, its pheasants, and its scurrying rabbits, is so much more pleasant to look at than a succession of market-gardens.  Poachers, game-keepers, and squires are alike interesting, if only they would dress so that he could know them apart.  He is enchanted with thatched cottages which look damp and picturesque.  He detests the model dwellings which are built with a too obvious regard for sanitation.  He seeks narrow and ill-smelling streets where the houses nod at each other, as if in the last stages of senility, muttering mysterious reminiscences of old tragedies.  He frequents scenes of ancient murders, and places where bandits once did congregate.  He leaves the railway carriage, to cross a heath where romantic highwaymen used to ask the traveler to stand and deliver.  He is indignant to find electric lights and policemen.  A heath ought to be lonely, and fens ought to be preserved from drainage.

He seeks dungeons and instruments of torture.  The dungeons must be underground, and only a single ray of light must penetrate.  He is much troubled to find that the dungeon in the Castle of Chillon is much more cheerful than he had supposed it was.  The Bridge of Sighs in Venice disappoints him in the same way.  Indeed, there are few places mentioned by Lord Byron that are as gloomy as they are in the poetical description.

The traveler is very insistent in his plea for the preservation of battlefields.  Now, Europe is very rich in battlefields, many of the most fertile sections having been fought over many times.  But the ravages of agriculture are everywhere seen.  There is no such leveler as the ploughman.  Often when one has come to refresh his mind with the events of one terrible day, he finds that there is nothing whatever to remind him of what happened.  For centuries there has been ploughing and harvesting.  Nature takes so kindly to these peaceful pursuits that one is tempted to think of the battle as merely an episode.

Commerce is almost as destructive.  Cities that have been noted for their sieges often turn out to be surprisingly prosperous.  The old walls are torn down to give way to parks and boulevards.  Massacres which in their day were noted leave no trace behind.  One can get more of an idea of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve by reading a book by one’s fireside than by going to Paris.  For all one can see there, there might have been no such accident.

Moral considerations have little place in the traveler’s mind.  The progressive ameliorations that have taken place tend to obscure our sense of the old conflicts.  A reform once accomplished becomes a part of our ordinary consciousness.  We take it for granted, and find it hard to understand what the reformer was so excited about.