Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/13

Rh letters which I had written from England, and which were preserved by my friends here with more care than they deserved. A young student leaving his home for the first time is easily pleased with whatever he sees in foreign lands; any hill scenery charms him, and the beauty of a lake throws him into ecstacies! Whatever I felt, I wrote in my letters to my friends, and much of what I wrote in the letters, I published on my return home. There was some justification in publishing these extracts from letters, eighteen years ago, when but few of my countrymen had travelled in Europe or had published their notes. After the lapse of 18 years I can scarcely read without a smile the accounts which I then wrote about every lake, stream or mountain which I saw; and the republication of such accounts at the present day, when so many of my countrymen have visited and ably written on Europe, is putting the good nature of an indulgent public to a rather severe test.

The last six chapters of this book relate to my later visit to Europe in 1886. Some of the places I visited on this occasion, like Norway and Sweden, Berlin and Vienna, Florence, Rome and Naples, are not generally visited by my young countrymen who go to England for education. But nevertheless I am but too well aware that my accounts