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A LYON,

AU DÉPOT DE LIBRAIRIE

FRANÇAISE ET ÉTRANGÈRE,

Rue de la Préfecture, n. 3.

Printed by G. Rossary, Saint Dominique street, no I

THE

SKETCH BOOK
BOOK

OF

GEOFFREY CRAYON,

GENT.

<< I have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide
for. A mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventu
res, and how they play their parts which, methinks,
are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre

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OF HIMSELF.

"I am of this mind with Homer, that as the snaile that crept out of her shel was turned eftsoons into a toad, and thereby was forced to make a stoole to sit on; so the traveller that stragleth from his owne country is in a short time transformed into so monstrous a shape, that he is faine to alter his manzion with his manners and to live where he can, not where he would. >>

LYLY'S EUFUES.

and observing

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been commited, or a ghost seen.. I visited the neighbouring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, from 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 of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!

Farther reading and thinking, though they brought

this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country and had I been merely influenced by a love of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification; for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean, her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine : — no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

My

But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly-cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. native country was full of youthful promise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement-to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity-to loiter about the ruined castle-to meditate on the falling tower-to escape, in short, from the common-place realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.

I had, besides all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, 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 great one, particularly the great man of a city. I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that all ani

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