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<h1> THE SKETCH BOOK. </h1>
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<h2> THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF </h2>
<p>I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her
shel was turned eftsoones into a toad I and thereby was forced to make a
stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is
in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to
alter his mansion with his manners, and to live where he can, not where he
would.—LYLY'S EUPHUES.</p>
<p>I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters
and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many
tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native
city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town
crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My
holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I
made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I
knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost
seen. I visited the neighboring villages, and added greatly to my stock of
knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their
sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit
of the most distant hill, whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of
terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.</p>
<p>This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and
travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected
the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about
the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships, bound to
distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening
sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!</p>
<p>Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination
into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I
visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover of
fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its
gratification, for on no country had the charms of nature been more
prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, her oceans of liquid silver; her
mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild
fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her
boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers,
rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where
vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the
magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine;—no, never need an
American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of
natural scenery.</p>
<p>But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical association.
There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly
cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom.
My native country was full of youthful promise; Europe was rich in the
accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of the times
gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander
over the scenes of renowned achievement—to tread, as it were, in the
footsteps of antiquity—to loiter about the ruined castle—to
meditate on the falling tower—to escape, in short, from the
commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy
grandeurs of the past.</p>
<p>I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the
earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has
an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been
almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there is nothing
so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly the
great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for
I had read in the works of various philosophers, that all animals
degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe,
thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man of America, as a
peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson; and in this idea I was
confirmed by observing the comparative importance and swelling magnitude
of many English travellers among us, who, I was assured, were very little
people in their own country. I will visit this land of wonders, thought I,
and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated.</p>
<p>It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion
gratified. I have wandered through different countries and witnessed many
of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied them with
the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze with which
humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print-shop
to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by
the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of
landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in
hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed
to get up a few for the entertainment of my friends. When, however, I look
over the hints and memorandums I have taken down for the purpose, my heart
almost fails me, at finding how my idle humor has led me astray from the
great object studied by every regular traveller who would make a book. I
fear I shall give equal disappointment with an unlucky landscape-painter,
who had travelled on the Continent, but following the bent of his vagrant
inclination, had sketched in nooks, and corners, and by-places. His
sketch-book was accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and
obscure ruins; but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coliseum,
the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not a single glacier
or volcano in his whole collection.</p>
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