THE TOURIST IN HISTORY
Mr. Edward Gibbon gives some advice (Autobiography):
1 will briefly describe the qualifica• tions which I deem most essential to a traveller He should be endowed with an active, indefatigable vigour of mind and body, which can -eize every mode of conveyance, and support, with a careless smile, every hardship of the road, the weather of the inn. The bene- fits of foreign travel will correspond with the degrees of these qualifications, but, in this sketch, those to whom I am known will not accuse me of framing my own panegyric. It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
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