orthodoxy from which a man strays at his personal risk; the canons of criticism and admiration have long ago been crystallized into dogmas from which it is heresy to dissent. We therefore meet with dull repetitions from traveller after traveller of the type that is content to think as others think, and who would never have dared to remark that the King in the fairy-tale had nothing on, had they met His Majesty when promenading in his invisible robes.

And that this attitude is the one approved and commended we may gather from Tom Hood's preface to the second edition of his Rhine Travels, where he says-' One of my critics snubs my book for not being like others on the same subject, and blames me for not treading more exactly in the footprints of my predecessors. In reply to this serious charge, I can only say that the animals most inclined to pursue the follow-my-leader system are geese.'

And in more modern days M. Taine, in reply to a very similar charge brought against him, implores his critics to allow every instru

ment to produce the sound natural to it— 'n'exigez pas un air approuvé, verifié, pour la plus grande gloire de la tradition.'

Liberty of opinion may be enjoyed in our day without fear of rack or stake, but not without some more or less unpleasant equivalent being still exacted as blackmail by Authority's self-constituted body-guard. A traveller who ventures to say, as not impossibly he may think, that the Farnese Hercules is in his opinion a greatly over-rated statue, and that it has the head of a microcephalous idiot, must be prepared for a storm of brickbats and abuse or the withering silence of contempt.

Art critics are as ferocious in their disposition, when roused, as those admirers of classic authors who, as Mr. Payn says, instead of pitying the poor wight who confesses himself unable to appreciate their excellence, fly upon him with bludgeons, and dance upon his prostrate body with clogs.

But though I can see the weighty reasons that deter travellers from expressing their genuine opinions, I none the less regret that it

should be so, for-unlike George Eliot-I hold with the dictum that it is the personal that interests mankind. She, on the contrary, regretted that writers should show so little scruple about mixing their own personality or flavour with that of every subject under the sun, more especially when the flavour is all they have to give, the knowledge and the facts having already been given by others.

For my own part, I regard facts something in the light of beef and mutton, as so much raw material for the cook to exert his skill on. Only a very flavourless person can touch a subject without imparting to it his own flavour, and most literary cooks may undoubtedly be recognized by their flavouring. But should some new dish make its appearance without a sponsor known to fame, it can do no one any harm to try whether it be flavoured to his liking Even though the cook be an inferior one, there may yet be persons to whom his sauces are sympathetic.

or not.

For this reason I do not think it a good or sufficient reason to adduce for refraining from

writing on some well-worn subject to say that it has already been dealt with by far abler hands. The very ability of those hands may have placed their writings above the heads of many readers.

Moreover, the failure of a literary cook can injure no one but himself, and I would say— pace George Eliot-let him in all humility try his power if he has a mind to do so, and leave it to others to pass judgment on the result.

It is our privilege to be heirs of all the ages, and the knowledge and the facts of past times are a quarry common to all writers. Some will take therefrom a bit of marble and make of it a vulgar bust, others a dancing faun, others the statue of a god. So many men, so many minds, is an ancient saying, and on its truth I rest my hopes of finding some readers who may be interested in these wholly personal— often impertinent-notes of travel.

E. A. KING.

ASHCOTT HILL, SOMERSET,

April, 1896

ITALIAN HIGHWAYS

IT was the end of October when we crossed in the mail-packet from Dover to Ostend on an absence of many months from England. Beyond an intention of visiting Munich, we had no very definite plans, and intended to drift with the tide of circumstances, expecting it, however, to carry us over the Alps somewhere into Italy. Our first halt was at Ghent. Lying slightly, very slightly, as it does, out of the main route, it is not much overrun by tourists, whose headlong rush is diverted by the smallest obstacle, and at this season it was absolutely deserted, except, of course, by such unimportant people as its native inhabitants. Nor is it a town that at all lays itself out to attract visitors; its streets are paved with cobble-stones, not kept in the best order, and to drive through them is to be deafened and