Amongst human conditions this is common enough:  to be better pleased with foreign things than with our own, and to love innovation and change: 

              “Ipsa dies ideo nos grato perluit haustu,
               Quod permutatis hora recurrit equis:” 

["The light of day itself shines more pleasantly upon us because it
changes its horses every hour.”  Spoke of a water hour-glass,
adds Cotton.]

I have my share.  Those who follow the other extreme, of being quite satisfied and pleased with and in themselves, of valuing what they have above all the rest, and of concluding no beauty can be greater than what they see, if they are not wiser than we, are really more happy; I do not envy their wisdom, but their good fortune.

This greedy humour of new and unknown things helps to nourish in me the desire of travel; but a great many more circumstances contribute to it; I am very willing to quit the government of my house.  There is, I confess, a kind of convenience in commanding, though it were but in a barn, and in being obeyed by one’s people; but ’tis too uniform and languid a pleasure, and is, moreover, of necessity mixed with a thousand vexatious thoughts:  one while the poverty and the oppression of your tenants:  another, quarrels amongst neighbours:  another, the trespasses they make upon you afflict you;

                   “Aut verberatae grandine vineae,
                    Fundusque mendax, arbore nunc aquas
                    Culpante, nunc torrentia agros
                    Sidera, nunc hyemes iniquas.”

["Or hail-smitten vines and the deceptive farm; now trees damaged
by the rains, or years of dearth, now summer’s heat burning up the
petals, now destructive winters.”—­Horatius, Od., iii.  I, 29.]

and that God scarce in six months sends a season wherein your bailiff can do his business as he should; but that if it serves the vines, it spoils the meadows: 

              “Aut nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol,
               Aut subiti perimunt imbres, gelidoeque pruinae,
               Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant;”

["Either the scorching sun burns up your fields, or sudden rains or
frosts destroy your harvests, or a violent wind carries away all
before it.”—­Lucretius, V. 216.]

to which may be added the new and neat-made shoe of the man of old, that hurts your foot,

[Leclerc maliciously suggests that this is a sly hit at Montaigne’s wife, the man of old being the person mentioned in Plutarch’s Life of Paulus Emilius, c. 3, who, when his friends reproached him for repudiating his wife, whose various merits they extolled, pointed to his shoe, and said, “That looks a nice well-made shoe to you; but I alone know where it pinches.”]

and that a stranger does not understand how much it costs you, and what you contribute to maintain that show of order that is seen in your family, and that peradventure you buy too dear.