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OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES AT THE AGE OF 82. From a painting by Sarah W.
Whitman

ROBERT BROWNING

MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD

SALISBURY CATHEDRAL

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE



INTRODUCTORY.

A PROSPECTIVE VISIT.

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After an interval of more than fifty years, I propose taking a second
look at some parts of Europe. It is a Rip Van Winkle experiment which I
am promising myself. The changes wrought by half a century in the
countries I visited amount almost to a transformation. I left the
England of William the Fourth, of the Duke of Wellington, of Sir Robert
Peel; the France of Louis Philippe, of Marshal Soult, of Thiers, of
Guizot. I went from Manchester to Liverpool by the new railroad, the
only one I saw in Europe. I looked upon England from the box of a