My Unknown Chum: "Aguecheek"

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Fairbanks Charles Bullard. My Unknown Chum: "Aguecheek"

FOREWORD

SKETCHES OF FOREIGN TRAVEL

A PASSAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

LONDON

ANTWERP AND BRUSSELS

GENOA AND FLORENCE

ANCIENT ROME

MODERN ROME

ROME TO MARSEILLES

MARSEILLES, LYONS, AND AIX IN SAVOY

AIX TO PARIS

PARIS

PARIS – THE LOUVRE AND ART

NAPOLEON THE THIRD1

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOREIGN TRAVEL

PARIS TO BOULOGNE

LONDON

ESSAYS

STREET LIFE

HARD UP IN PARIS

THE OLD CORNER

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY

THE OLD CATHEDRAL

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING

BOYHOOD AND BOYS

JOSEPHINE – GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS

MEMORIALS OF MRS. GRUNDY

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

BEHIND THE SCENES

THE PHILOSOPHY OF CANT

Отрывок из книги

"To an American visiting Europe for the first time," saith Geoffrey Crayon, "the long voyage which he has to make is an excellent preparative." To the greater proportion of those who revisit the old world, the voyage is only an interval of ennui and impatience. Not such is it to the writer of this sentence. For him the sea has charms which age cannot wither, nor head winds abate. For him the voyage is a retreat from the cares of business, a rest from the pursuit of wealth, and a prolonged reminiscence of his youthful days, when he first trod the same restless pathway, and the glories of England and the Continent rose up resplendent before him, very much as the gorgeous city in the clouds looms up before the young gentleman in one of the late lamented Mr. Cole's pictures. For it is a satisfaction to him to remember that such things were, – even though the performances of life have not by any means equalled the promises of the programme of youth, – though age and the cares of an increasing family have stifled poetry, and the genius of Romance has long since taken his hat.

The recollections of youthful Mediterranean voyages are a mine of wealth to an old man. They have transformed ancient history into a majestic reality for him, and the pages of his dog's-eared Lemprière become instinct with life as he recalls those halcyon days when he reclined on deck beneath an awning, and gazed on Crete and Lesbos, and the mountains that look on Marathon. Neither age nor misfortune can ever rob him of the joy he feels when he looks back to the cloudless afternoon when he passed from the stormy Atlantic to that blue inland sea, – when he saw where Africa has so long striven to shake hands with Europe, – and thrilled at the thought that the sea then glowing with the hues of sunset was once ploughed by the invincible galleys of the Cæsars, and dashed its angry surges over the shipwrecked Apostle of the Gentiles.

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On one account I have again and again blessed the star that guided me to Antwerp, – that is, for the pleasure afforded me by its treasures of art. I have, in times past, fed fat my appetite for the beautiful in the galleries of Italy, and therefore counted but little on the contents of the museum and churches of this ancient city. Do not be frightened, beloved reader; I am not going to launch out into the muddy stream of artistic criticism. I despise most of that which passes current under that dignified name, as heartily as you do. Even the laurels of Mr. Ruskin cannot rob me of a moment's repose. I cannot if I would, nor would I if I could, talk learnedly about pictures. So I can safely promise not to bore you with any "breadth of colouring," and to keep very "shady" about chiaro 'scuro. I only wish to say that he who has never been in Antwerp does not know who Rubens was. He may know that an industrious painter of that name once lived, and painted (as I used to think, judging from most of his works that I had seen elsewhere) a variety of fat, flaxen-haired women; but of Rubens, the great master, the painter of the Crucifixion, and the Descent from the Cross, he is as ignorant as a fourth-form boy in the public schools of Patagonia. It is worth a month of seasick voyaging to see the works of Rubens and Vandyck which Antwerp possesses; and the only regret connected with my visit there has been, that I could not give more days to the study of them than I could hours.

It is but fifteen miles from Antwerp to Mechlin, or Malines, (as the people here, in the depths of their ignorance, insist upon calling it,) and as a representative of a nation whose sole criterion is success, and whose list of the cardinal virtues is headed by Prosperity, I felt that it would be a grievous sin of omission for me not to stop and visit that thriving old town. It did not require much time to walk through its nice, quiet streets, and look at the pictures and wood carvings in its venerable churches. The white-capped and bright-eyed lace-makers sat in windows and doorways, their busy fingers forming fabrics, the sight of which would kindle the fire of covetousness in any female heart. Three hours in Mechlin sufficed to make me about as well acquainted with it as if I had daily waked up its echoes with the creaking of my shoes, until their thick soles were worn out past all hope of tapping. Selecting one of the numerous railways that branch out from Mechlin, like the reins from the hand of a popular circus rider in his favourite "six-horse-act," the "Courier of St. Petersburg," I took a ticket for Brussels, and soon found myself spinning along over these fertile plains, whose joyous verdure I had not sufficient time to appreciate before I found myself in the capital of Belgium.

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