Page:Compromises (Repplier).djvu/206

 190 the purchaser. Chillon is not without sombre associations, nor poetic life; and if Byron's "Prisoner" no longer wrings our hearts, still youth is youth,—or, at least, it used to be,—and the

were at one time part of its inheritance. Is it better, I wonder, to begin life with a few illusions, a little glow, a pardonable capacity for enthusiasm, or to be so healthily free from every breath of sentiment as to be capable—at eighteen—of buying comic bears within the melancholy portals of Chillon.

Travelling, like novel-writing, is but a modern form of activity; and tourists, like novelists, are increasing at so fearful a rate of speed that foreign countries and library shelves bid fair to be equally overrun. There was a time when good men looked askance both upon the page of fable, and upon those far countries where reality was stranger than romance. "I was once in Italy myself," confesses the pious Roger Ascham; "but I thank God my abode there was but nine days." Nine days seem a scant allowance for Italy. Even the