We can not all be romantic about landscapes. Nature has worshipers enough not to grudge a few to Art. For myself, admiring both when in perfection, I prefer hewn stones to rough rocks--the Canalazzo to _any_ cascade. The glory of old days that clings round the Palace of the Doges stands comparison, in my mind's eye, with the Iris of Terni.
But why trench on a field already amply cultivated? I will never describe any place till I find a virgin spot untouched by Murray, and then I will send it to him, with my initials. Does such exist in Europe? "Faith, very hardly, sir." _Nil intentatum reliquit._ What obligations do we not owe to the accomplished compilers? Rarely rising into poetry (I except "Spain"--the field, and bar one), never jocose, they move on, severe in simplicity, straight to their solemn end of enlightening the British tourist. Upright as Rhadamanthus, they hold the scales that weigh the merits of cathedrals, hotels, ruins, guides, pictures, and mountain passes, telling us what to eat, drink, and avoid. Let us repose on them in blind but contented reliance.
I heard of one man, clever but eccentric, who became so exasperated at seeing the volumes in every body's hand, and hearing them in every body's mouth, that he conceived a sort of personal enmity to them, impiously dissenting from their conclusions and questioning their premises. The well-known red cover at last had the same effect on him as the scarlet cloak on the bull in the _corrida_, making him stamp and roar hideously. The angry gods had demented him. _Væ misero!_ How could such sacrilege end but badly? Braving and deriding the solemn warning of the prophet, he attempted a certain pass in the Tyrol alone, and, losing his way, caught a pleurisy which proved fatal. He died game, but, I am sorry to say, impenitent, speaking blasphemy against the book with his last breath. _Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere--_
Such heresy, be it far from me! If I had my will, I protest I would found a "Murray's Traveling Fellowship" in one or both of the Universities. If I had the poetic vein, I would indite a pendant to Byron's iambics to that enlightened bibliopole. He published "Childe Harold," and the Hand-book to Every Where. Could one man in one century do more for the Ideal and the Real?