Travelling Sketches

If I may venture to give two words of advice to those of my fellow-countrymen who travel frequently during their vacations, and who feel on self-examination that they have not hitherto in reality liked their tourings, in those two words I will advise them both to affect less and to perform less. What matters it who knows that you cannot speak two words of French together grammatically? All whom it in the least concerns probably do know it. Be content to speak your two words ungrammatically, or, if that be beyond you, be content not to speak them at all. The mountains and valleys will render themselves to you without French. The pictures on the walls will not twit you with your ignorance. Venus and Apollo could not come to you out of their marble, though they were as many-tongued as Mezzofanti; but they will come to you if you speak to them out of your own heart with such language as is at your ready disposal. But, above all things, take your time in discoursing with these works of nature and these works of art. To be able to be happy and at rest among the mountains is better than a capacity for talking French in saloons.