without luggage, sketching also, and increasing his carefully gathered
knowledge of French architecture.

He had explored France very thoroughly before he found the part of it
which was to become almost a second homeland in his affections; and he had
the Frenchman's appreciation of what was most characteristically France.
"I think the better of the French," he wrote at this time, "for their
admiration of the scenery of the Loire, the Indre, and the Vienne. Few
English people are capable of appreciating the scenery of Anjou.... I
never saw anything more lovely than the scenery of the Vilaine south of
Guichen and Bourg des Comptes."

But this was only an excursion. The whole bent of his desire lay towards
serious travel, in which he should pass from the training-
ground of the University to that wider school where knowledge was to be
gained, applied, and perfected. In the early part of 1866 he was talking
only of a journey in America, and it was a journey with a literary
purpose. In his _History of Radicalism_ he had given much space to the
Revivals in Prussia led by Ebel, and also to the rise in America of the
school of the Perfectionists in 1834. He proposed to take with him the
sketch of this book, and work into it the results of inquiry made on the
spot as regards the communistic experiments which had been tried in the
United States.

But travel for its own sake tempted him, and even before he set out, 'I
fancy,' he writes, 'my intention was already to go round the world: but if
I had asked my father's leave to do so, I should have been refused.'

At all events, when once fairly launched, the interest of travelling
absorbed his mind; and accordingly the book on Radicalism was finally put