The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-22 00:00:00

Holiday Makers.

A writer from Homburg, Aug. 18, states there is a poem
by Parini entitled "Ii Giorno," one of the most laborious
efforts in Italian literature, which professes to teach a
young Lombard nobleman "how to do nothing from morn-
ing to night." The art of killing time is not to be learnt
without pains, even in that Southern land, where dolce far
niente is said to be a normal state of existence. What shall
it be in England, where the hurry and scurry of the Derby
Day makes up for Carnival, harvest home, vintage, and all
the 865 festivals enlivening a Roman calendar? John Bull
has killed pleasure at home ; he must needs go abroad and
show how he can amuse himself, " tristernent a l'usage de son
pays.

John Bull is not an unamusable fellow, nevertheless,
though he has his own peculiar ways of enjoying himself.
His fondness for violent, perilous exercise is the result of
sanguine temperament., of exuberant animal spirits. There
is nothing like running the chance of breaking one's neck,
to give existence a fresher start, a more intense relish;
and next to the delight of venturing one's life comes that
of staking one's purse. Hence the Englishman when out
on a holiday is to be found at the Taunus Spas, or the
Swiss chamois paths. Though he may be no gambler
himself, and -no mountain-climber, he loves to be near a
thousand fathoms' slope, or a rouleau-engulphing roulette.
Why, with such peculiarities, an Englishman prefers going
abroad for his "lark" is a point easily settled. A slip down
the crags of Ben Nevis or Snowdon is as likely to settle a
man's business as a tumble from the Matterhorn. And,
although the Baths and Little Baths of the West of Eng-
land can boast of no green table-cloths, still a pigeon is at
no loss for rooks in many a lurking corner not a hundred
miles from Pall-mall. But there is no way of running away
from one's self in England • from one's cares; from one's
neighbours. Every place becomes Cockneyfied as soon as
known. Every man in England wastes his breath in an
anxious race after his " betters," while these show as great
an alacrity in cutting their " equals." These centrifugal
and centripetal forces aro at work abroad as well as athome.
Everywhere you see a stream of the English running after
and running away from the English. What was charm-
ingly select" ten years ago runs a chance of becoming a
solitude the moment the "quality" voted it common-
place. Mont Blanc is almost as Cockney a mountain now-
now-
a-days as the Rigi.
Anxious, with the majority of my acquaintance, to be
out of London and England in these glorious summer days,
and bent upon following English pleasure-seekers wherever
they may be found, in what direction, I asked myself, shall
I wend my way ? The English, I repeat, exercise upon
one another a certain force both of attraction and repul-
sion. They crowd upon each other even while they strive
with all their might to go asunder. " I have not come
abroad to see my own countrymen," is the general outcry;
" and if I only wanted to meet the Jenkinses and Per-
kinses, 1 hardly needed to leave Middlesex." But, for all
that, John Bull feels lost in a foreign crowd, and clings to
his own. Only he would rather fall in with the " right set."
The time has long since gone by when the English mono-
polised the post chaise and the wayside inn. We no longer
hear, as of yore, of the first-class carriage in the German
railways being reserved for " Princes and the English." A
great proof of the well-being that is gradually spreading
over the Continent may be found in the fact that French
and Germans, and even Italians and Spaniards, fill the
hotels which were first built for the accommodation
of Britons and Russians. The English are no longer more
than a unit in the mass of pent-up travellers jostling against
one another on a Leman steamer, or flattening their noses
behind the closed glass doors of a waiting-room at a French
railway. Here at Homburg, at Ems, at Wiesbaden, all
round the Taunus, you have barely an English or a Yankee
name against ten un-English.
I only came in here last evening, and had barely time to
look about me. There is not much to be neon at Homburg,
as every ono is aware, as to the place itself, but much to
attract attention and set a man thinking with respect to its
summer visitors. A walk up and down the platform before
the Kursaal and a look at the groups sitting round or loung-
ing about satisfy you of the enormous difficulty the majo-
rity have to contend. with in their endeavour to get rid of
the "enemy." The air is fresh and breezy, and the sun
white fleecy clouds
tempered by ; the gardens are bloom-
ing; the plants in the orange-boxes taper up slender and
graceful, rearing their round crests almost on a level with
the roof of the handsome Kursaal building ; and the woody
slopes of the Taunus invite enterprising strollers up to the
top of that Grosse Feldberg; down the cliffs of which no
man ever broke his neck ; but on the countenances of most
men there is a listlessness which no prOspect of a 5 o'clock
table d'hote dinner has power to dispel ; and the ladies sit
yawning, seemingly lost to the very sense of admiration