But another man may travel for archaeological or even statistical
reasons. He may wish, like Ulysses, to study "manners, councils,
customs, governments." He may be preoccupied with questions of
architectural style or periods of sculpture. I have a friend who
takes up at intervals the study of the pictures of a particular
master, and will take endless trouble and undergo incredible
discomfort, in order to see the vilest daubs, if only he can make
his list complete, and say that he has seen all the reputed works
of the master. This instinct is, I believe, nothing but the
survival of the childish instinct for collecting, and though I can
reluctantly admire any man who spares no trouble to gain an end,
the motive is dark and unintelligible to me.
There are some travellers, like Dean Stanley, who drift from the
appreciation of natural scenery into the pursuit of historical
associations. The story of Stanley as a boy, when he had his first
sight of the snowy Alps on the horizon, always delights me. He
danced about saying, "Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do?" But,
in later days, Stanley would not go a mile to see a view, while he
would travel all night to see a few stones of a ruin, jutting out
of a farmyard wall, if only there was some human and historical
tradition connected with the place.
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