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LOITERINGS IN PLEASANT PATHS

    BY
    MARION HARLAND
    _Author of “The Dinner Year-Book,” “Common Sense in the Household,”
    Etc._


    NEW YORK
    CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
    743 AND 745 BROADWAY
    1880




    COPYRIGHT BY
    CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
    1880.


    TROW’S
    PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
    201-213 EAST 12TH STREET,
    NEW YORK.




INTRODUCTION.


WHEN I began the MS. of this book, it was with the intention of
including it in the “Common Sense in the Household Series,” in which
event it was to be entitled, “FAMILIAR TALKS FROM AFAR.”

For reasons that seemed good to my publishers and to me, this purpose
was not carried out, except as it has influenced the tone of the
composition; given to each chapter the character of experiences
remembered and recounted to a few friends by the fireside, rather
than that of a sustained and formal narrative, penned in dignified
seclusion, amid guide-books and written memoranda.

This is the truthful history of the foreign life of an American family
whose main object in “going on a pilgrimage” was the restoration of
health to one of its members. In seeking and finding the lost treasure,
we found so much else which enriched us for all time, that, in the
telling of it, I have been embarrassed by a plethora of materials.
I have described some of the things we wanted to see—as we saw
them,—writing _con amore_, but with such manifold strayings from the
beaten track into by-paths and over moors, and in such homely, familiar
phrase, that I foresee criticism from the disciples of routine and
the sedate students of chronology, topography and general statistics.
I comfort myself, under the prospective infliction, with the belief
which has not played me false in days past,—to wit: that what I have
enjoyed writing some may like to read. I add to this the hope that the
fresh-hearted traveler who dares think and feel for, and of himself, in
visiting the Old World which is to him the New, may find in this record
of how we made it Home to us, practical and valuable hints for the
guidance of his wanderings.

                                                MARION HARLAND.

SPRINGFIELD, MASS., April, 1880.




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER I.
                                                       PAGE
    The Average Briton,                                   1

    CHAPTER II.
    Olla Podrida,                                        14

    CHAPTER III.
    Spurgeon and Cummings,                               29

    CHAPTER IV.
    The Two Elizabeths,                                  39

    CHAPTER V.
    Prince Guy,                                          52

    CHAPTER VI.
    Shakspeare and Irving,                               67

    CHAPTER VII.
    Kenilworth,                                          84

    CHAPTER VIII.
    Oxford,                                              96

    CHAPTER IX.
    Sky-larks and Stoke-Pogis,                          111

    CHAPTER X.
    Our English Cousins,                                121

    CHAPTER XI.
    Over the Channel,                                   137

    CHAPTER XII.
    Versailles—Expiatory Chapel—Père Lachaise,          154

    CHAPTER XIII.
    Southward Bound,                                    170

    CHAPTER XIV.
    Pope, King, and Forum,                              183

    CHAPTER XV.
    On Christmas-Day,                                   196

    CHAPTER XVI.
    L’Allegro and Il Penseroso,                         216

    CHAPTER XVII.
    With the Skeletons,                                 230

    CHAPTER XVIII.
    “Paul—a Prisoner,”                                  243

    CHAPTER XIX.
    Tasso and Tusculum,                                 258

    CHAPTER