Brindisi. In the first place, it is a very easy matter to cross over to Greece. You may spend your three months very profitably there among the Ionian Islands and in Asia Minor. It is a distinct achievement during a Long Vacation to have visited Constantinople. Then, again, at Brindisi you are only twenty-two hours' sail from Alexandria; and there the East is thoroughly unlocked for you. Every winter persons go up the Nile for the three worst months, but it is to be regretted that so many of them think it necessary to rush into print on the subject of their wanderings. Upper Egypt is absolutely inexhaustible in points of interest, and it must be confessed that tourists do very little towards exhausting them. Then when you are at Cairo, why not run across the railway to Suez, the smoothest line of railway in the world? It will be perfectly practicable for you in your Long Vacation to get out as far as India. You will probably contrive to extend your vacation a little. The mere feat of getting out to India and back is an enormous gain. It is still better if you can manage to see New Zealand or Australia. As a patriot the offshoots of our own imperial system have a distinct claim upon you. They are there working out all the experiments and problems of social life and of the arts of government. If you are

in search of health as well as of pleasure and information, these more distant expeditions will probably

prove replete with usefulness.

I should think that a residence in India would be very good for a bronchial subject. Lord Macaulay in his later years had thoughts of going to reside there; and a voyage to Australia and back has frequently proved a remedy, when all other remedies have failed, for the consumptive.

Now, for this

In those elegant' prescriptions variously compounded in which physicians delight, there is generally some one item which is designed to produce the effect intended. Now, in all travel the thoroughness of change is that which is chiefly sought. commend me to Venice beyond all places in the world. Venice never disappoints one. You feel yourself transplanted not only to another land, but to another planet. You could hardly feel more surprised if you were suddenly removed to Mars or Mercury. Possibly the time will come when Mars and Mercury will be not impracticable. You may go to Venice in the ordinary Long Vacation. Not till July do the remoter canals become somewhat odorous, or you find it necessary to draw your mosquito curtains. If the weather becomes too warm, you can seek the Tyrol or the Alps; if the weather becomes cold, descend on Florence and the South. But I have no partialities to maintain. I do not wish to force Venice upon anybody, although Venice is perhaps the only place that never disappoints. There are many good places

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not so known as they should be; go to Corfu, to Andorra, to the Balearic Isles-go to Jericho. man has written a book, Try Lapland. By all means. I have no objection. Iceland is remarkably good, I believe; nowhere is there a bolder coast. Spitzbergen and Kamschatka have their charms. You ought at least to have a run upon that wonderful railway which is the pioneer of civilisation in the Far West. If you are dismayed at the 'little pond,' in the first instance, give a Long Vacation to Ireland. An army of tourists would do Ireland a great deal of good, and a great deal of good would be done for the tourists. run a chance of the people taking you for a Government spy, and the Government people taking you for a disguised Fenian, but you must not mind that.

You will

You are tired of the

You want to exert your out a path for yourself, to entirely, to gratify a love The late Lord Aberdeen

The Long Vacation may give us another idea. Perhaps you want a more thorough change than any mere travel can supply. monotony of civilised life. physical energies, to strike shift the venue utterly and of freedom and adventure. was a case of this sort. He was emphatically a fine fellow-a dead shot, a sailor, a mathematician, an artist, and a good moral, religious man. But he tired of life as he found it, with its grandeur, luxury, and conventionalities. He went to sea as a common sailor, and died the mate of a small American ship.

We think he carried the joke too far; and possibly in a quarter of a century we may be reading of a great Aberdeen case. But there was method in his madness. He knew that life was short, and he wanted to cram into life as much as he could; that other spheres of life had an equal or greater use, and as many varied interests, and probably more happiness. I know a man who with great contentment worked his passage behind the mast to New York. I have read of one who lived and worked for a long time as a Manchester operative. Christopher North ran away for six months and lived with the gipsies. In the old story the 'gentleman' would have been all the better if he had been basket-maker as well. Haroun Alraschid was never so happy as when he disguised himself and got into what he thought a lower stratum of society. The Jews of old always learned a handicraft, and in Germany the practice still prevails; they say the Cæsar is only a printer. I don't want to make any sort of social revolution; but this I say, if you want a complete alteration in all social conditions, to explore pits, understand manufactures, go out to Africa for diamonds, mingle freely with the people, become an amateur casual, or anything else of the sort, the Long Vacation will give you an opportunity. This is probably going too far, but that conclusion is for yourself. There are other principles suggested by Long Vacations. The leading notion is, and always

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will be, that they enable you to go a long way off, and see places that are absolutely inaccessible to the vast majority of tourists. Some people indeed are only just able to go 'there and back again,' and supplement their journey by extensively reading up the country both before they start and after they come back. a Long Vacation thoroughly well worked, you may be able to understand a country thoroughly. A celebrated surgeon once said that he learned nothing in the first year or two of his studies, except that he knew nothing. Only gradually was he able to gather up his facts, and perceive that he was making progress. In working through a country you really know nothing of the scenery, society, politics, language, although you ignorantly suppose that you know a great deal; but stay a few weeks, and you will find that you know nothing. Prolong your stay for a few months, and you will find that you really do know a great deal. Your preliminary days will have no value of their own, but they will have a great value when coupled on to succeeding days. Gradually your ideas and information will take shape and order. Charles the Fifth used to say that so many languages a man knew, so many times was he a man. Know thoroughly some other country than your own -approfondissez, go to the bottom of things thoroughly, and you will be enlarging the limits of existence, you will be taking another state of exist