THE AUTHOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF
by Washington Irving
"I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept outof her shel was turned eftsoons into a toad, and thereby was forced tomake a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his ownecountry is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, thathe is faine to alter his mansion with his manners, and to live wherehe can, not where he would."LYLY'S EUPHUES.
I WAS always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strangecharacters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, andmade many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions ofmy native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolumentof the town-crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range ofmy observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about thesurrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famousin history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery hadbeen committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages,and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits andcustoms, and conversing with their sages and great men. I evenjourneyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distanthill, whence I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita,and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.
This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books ofvoyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring theircontents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. Howwistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, andwatch the parting ships, bound to distant climes- with what longingeyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself inimagination to the ends of the earth!
Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vagueinclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it moredecided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I beenmerely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire toseek elsewhere its gratification, for on no country have the charms ofnature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans ofliquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints; hervalleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts,thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving withspontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemnsilence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation putsforth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic ofsummer clouds and glorious sunshine;- no, never need an Americanlook beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of naturalscenery.
But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poeticalassociation. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, therefinements of highly-cultivated society, the quaint peculiaritiesof ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthfulpromise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her veryruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stonewas a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renownedachievement- to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity- toloiter about the ruined castle- to meditate on the falling tower- toescape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, andlose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.
I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to see the great men ofthe earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a citybut has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in mytime, and been almost withered by the shade into which they cast me;for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a greatone, particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to seethe great men of Europe; for I had read in the works of variousphilosophers, that all animals degenerated in America, and man amongthe number. A great man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be assuperior to a great man of America, as a peak of the Alps to ahighland of the Hudson; and in this idea I was confirmed, by observingthe comparative importance and swelling magnitude of many Englishtravellers among us, who, I was assured, were very little people intheir own country. I will visit this land of wonders, thought I, andsee the gigantic race from which I am degenerated.
It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passiongratified. I have wandered through different countries, andwitnessed many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that Ihave studied them with the eye of a philosopher; but rather with thesauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque strollfrom the window of one print-shop to another; caught sometimes bythe delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions ofcaricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it is thefashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in hand, and bring hometheir portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a fewfor the entertainment of my friends. When, however, I look over thehints and memorandums I have taken down for the purpose, my heartalmost fails me at finding how my idle humor has led me aside from thegreat objects studied by every regular traveller who would make abook. I fear I shall give equal disappointment with an unluckylandscape painter, who had travelled on the continent, but,following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had sketched innooks, and corners, and by-places. His sketchbook was accordinglycrowded with cottages, and landscapes, and obscure ruins; but he hadneglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coliseum; the cascade of Terni,or the bay of Naples; and had not a single glacier or volcano in hiswhole collection.
THE END
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1819-20
