All this admitted, Newman enjoyed his journey,
when once he had fairly entered the current, as profoundly as the most
zealous dilettante. One's theories, after all, matter little; it is
one's humor that is the great thing. Our friend was intelligent, and
he could not help that. He lounged through Belgium and Holland and
the Rhineland, through Switzerland and Northern Italy, planning about
nothing, but seeing everything. The guides and valets de place found
him an excellent subject. He was always approachable, for he was much
addicted to standing about in the vestibules and porticos of inns, and
he availed himself little of the opportunities for impressive seclusion
which are so liberally offered in Europe to gentlemen who travel
with long purses. When an excursion, a church, a gallery, a ruin, was
proposed to him, the first thing Newman usually did, after surveying
his postulant in silence, from head to foot, was to sit down at a little
table and order something to drink. The cicerone, during this process,
usually retreated to a respectful distance; otherwise I am not sure that
Newman would not have bidden him sit down and have a glass also, and
tell him as an honest fellow whether his church or his gallery was
really worth a man's trouble. At last he rose and stretched his long
legs, beckoned to the man of monuments, looked at his watch, and
fixed his eye on his adversary.
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