On Going a Journey Essay Example for Free

On Going a Journey earth-clo put downvasOne of the pleasantest things in the origination is going a journey exactly I the likes of to go by myself. I discount enjoy society in a room still step forward(p) of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less al ane than when alone. The handle his study, nature was his book.I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the analogous cartridge founderer. When I am in the country, I wish to ve dumbfoundate like the country. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and only that is in it. thither be those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more(prenominal) than elbow-room, and fewer incumbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude nor do I ask for a friend in my retreat,Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet.The soul of a journey is liberty, accurate liberty, to destine, relish, do estimable as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be warrant of all impediments and of all inconveniences to leave ourselves behind, a good deal more to get rid of opposites. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,That in the various bustle of resortWere all too ruffled, and sometimes impaird,that I absent myself from the town for a small-arm, without contact at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale outcomes over again, for once let me exact a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear lively sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours march to d aubergeerand then to thinking It is hard if I cannot start some blue on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the microscope stage of yonder bowl cloud, I plunge into my past being, and revel in that location, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native shore. hence long-forgotten things, like sunken wrack and sumless treasuries, burst upon my eagersight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an embarrassing silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the flavor which alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do but I sometimes had rather be without them. Leave, oh, leave me to my reposeI retain just now originator(a) business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me very stuff of the conscience. Is not this furious rise sweet without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald? moreover if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeargond it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then continue it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I call for heard it said that you may, when the moody fit get ins on, walk or ride on by yourself, and corrupt your reveries. But this looks like a breach of politeness, a neglect of others, and you atomic number 18 thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party. expose upon such half-faced fellowship, say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others to talk or be silent, to walk or sit st paraplegic, to be sociable or solitary.I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbetts, that he thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time. So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing an d lively conversation by fits and starts, Let me give way a companion of my way, says Sterne, were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines. It is beautifully said but in my perspicacity, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid if you flummox to explain it, it is making a wear down of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature, without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for the synthetical method on a journey, in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay out in a stock of subjects then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards.I want to see my vague notions brag like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way and thisis im contingent unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any one for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark the scent of a beanfield go across the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to suffer out his nut to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the food coloring of a cloud which hits your plan, but the effect of which you are unable to direct for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill humour. Now I never quarrel with myself, and seclude all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections.It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before youthese may recal a number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate and groovy to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company, seems extravagance or sham and on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal saki in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must(prenominal)(prenominal) give it an understanding, but no tongue.My old friend C, however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a summers day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. He talked far above singing. If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the s tumesceing theme or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to hear his echoing voice in the w oods of All-Foxden. They had that fine madness in them which our primary poets had and if they could have been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed such st falls as the following. Here be woods as greenAs any, air likewise as fresh and sweetAs when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleetFace of the curled stream, with flowrs as manyAs the young stick out gives, and as choice as anyHere be all vernal delights, cool streams and wells,Arbours oergrown with woodbine, caves and dells drive where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,Or gather rushes to make many a ringFor thy long fingers tell thee tales of love,How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,First saw the son Endymion, from whose eyesShe took eternal fire that never diesHow she conveyd him softly in a sleep,His temples bound with poppy, to the steep mountain pass of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,Gilding the mountain with her brothers light,To kiss her sweetest.Faithful Shepherdess.Had I words and images at necessitate like these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the flush clouds but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spotI must have time to fool myself. In general, a good thing sp oil colours out-of-door prospects it should be reserved for Table-talk. L is for this reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors because he is the outflank within. I grant, there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by lay a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it.How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted just at the approach of night-fall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom and then after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to take ones ease at ones inn These eveningtful moments in our lives history are too precious, too full of solid, heart-felt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop they will do to talk of or to write rough afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea, The cups thatcheer, but not inebriate,and letting the exhaust ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we shall have for suppereggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet Sancho in such a situation once fixed upon cow-heel and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the tizzy in the kitchenProcul, O procul este profani Th ese hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to play the source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk or if I must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and place he is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not even try to sympathise with him, and he breaks no squares.I plug into nothing with my travelling companion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the generalisation of the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits or from having some one with you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems that other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world but your unhoused free condition is put into circumscription and confine. The incognito of an inn is one of its striking privilegeslord of ones-self, uncumberd with a name. Oh it is great to shake send out off the trammels of the world and of public opinionto lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting personal identicalness in the elements of nature, and become the creature of the moment, clear of all tiesto hold to the universe only by a dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the eveningand no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than the Gentleman in the parlourOne may take ones choice of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty as to ones real pretensions, and become indefinitely respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We set about prejudice anddisappoin t conjecture and from being so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world an inn restores us to the train of nature, and quits scores with society I have certainly spent some enviable hours at innssometimes when I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideasat other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St. Neots, (I think it was) where I eldest met with Gribelins engravings of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little inn on the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of Westalls drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the prize artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in the boat between me and the tw ilightat other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read capital of Minnesota and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day and at the same place I got through two volumes of Madame DArblays Camilla.It was on the tenth part of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he initial caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with me as a bon bouche to crown the evening with. It was my birth-day, and I had for the first time come from a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham and on passing a certain point, you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphith eatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with green highland(prenominal) swells that echo to the bleat of flocks below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them.The valley at this time glittered green with sunny showers, and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how gladiolus I was to walk along the high road that strike downs the delicious prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridges poems. But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another also opened to my inwardsight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, LIBERTY, GENIUS, LOVE, virtuousness which have since faded into the light of common day, or mock my idle gaze. The beautiful is vanished, and blow overs not.Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot but I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the fragments of which I could hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been broken and defaced I could stand on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice of years that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now? Not only I myself have changed the world, which was then new to me, has become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou then wert and thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink of the waters of life freely There is hardly any thing that shows the short-sightedness or capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. With change of place we change our ideas nay, our opinions and feelings.We can by an causa indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives again but we forget those that we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We cannot flip ones lid our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it the horizon that shuts it from our sight, also blots it from our memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild barren country, I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one. It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despise the country. Beyond Hyde Park, says Sir Fopling Flutter, all is a desert.All that part of the map that we do not see before us is a blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much big than a nutshell . It is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, making an image winding and vastthe mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of China to us? An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange Things near us are seen of the size of life things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the food grain of our own being only mo-meal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places.The mind is like a robotic instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our existence we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived and with which we have intimate associations, every one must have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the material impression we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not thought of for years but for the time all the rest of the world is forgottenTo return to the question I have quitted above. I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and will bear talking about.The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, th e first consideration always is where we shall go to in taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way. The mind is its own place nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean eclatshewed them that quarter of the Muses at a distance, With glistering spires and pinnacles adornddescanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles and stone walls of halls and collegeswas at station in the Bodleian and atBlenheim quite superseded the powdered Ciceroni that attended us, and that pointed in vain with his wand to common-place beauties in peerless pictures.As another exception to the above reasoning, I should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my own language.There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Eng lishman to foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from dwelling house increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself in the comeuppance of Arabia without friends and countrymen there must be allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old capital of Italy that claims the utterance of speech and I own that the Pyramids are too mighty for any simple contemplation. In such situations, so opposite to all ones ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by ones-self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet with instant fellowship and support.Yet I did not feel this want or craving very pressing once, when I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into my ears nor did the mariners hymn, wh ich was sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien sound into my soul.I only breathed the air of general humanity. I walked over the vine-covered hills and mirthful regions of France, erect and satisfied for the image of man was not cast down and chained to the foot of positive thrones I was at no loss for language, for that of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled nothing remains but the Bourbons and the French peopleThere is undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into foreign parts that is to be had nowhere else but it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It is too remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state of existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated but a momentary hallucination.It demands an effort to exchange our actua l for our ideal identity and to feel the pulse of our old transports revive very keenly, we must jump all our present solace and connexions. Our romantic and itinerant character is not to bedomesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and in one soul instructive but it appears to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the same, but another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we are out of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as our friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings, Out of my country and myself I go.Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recal them but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could any where borrow another life to spend afterwards at home Hazlitt.