in. You can act thus with Grenoble and with many a town on the Meuse,
and particularly with Aubusson, which lies in the depths of so dreadful
a trench that I could wonder how man ever dreamt of living and building
there.

The most difficult of all places on which to advise, I think, would be
the very great cities, the capitals. They seem to have to-day no noble
entries and no proper approach. Perhaps we shall only deal with them
justly when we can circle down to them through the air and see their
vast activity splashed over the plain. Anyhow, there is no proper way of
entering them now that I know of. Berlin is not worth entering at all.
Rome (a man told me once) could be entered by some particular road over
the Janiculum, I think--which also, if I remember right, was the way
that Shelley came--but I despair of Paris, and certainly of London. I
cannot even recall an entry for Brussels, though Brussels is a
monumental city with great rewards for those who love the combination of
building and hills.

Perhaps, after all, the happiest entries of all and the most easy are
those of our many market towns, small and not swollen in Britain and in
Northern Gaul and in the Netherlands and in the Valley of the Rhine.
These hardly ever fail us, and we come upon them in our travels as they
desire that we should come, and we know them properly as things should
properly be known--that is, from the beginning.




Companions of Travel