Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands

“Life had presented too many vicissitudes before me, to make much difference in my temperament, whatever came uppermost. Like the gambler, who if he lose to-day, goes off consol...

It was in the month of May--I won’t confess to the year--that I found myself, after trying various hotels in the Place Royale, at last deposited at the door of the Hôtel de Fran...

Every one knows how rapidly acquaintance ripens into intimacy when mere accident throws two persons together in situations where they have no other occupation than each other’s...

“I can tell you but little about my family,” said my host, stretching out his legs to the fire, and crossing his arms easily before him. “My grandfather was in the Austrian serv...

I am half sorry already that I have told that little story of myself. Somehow the recollection is painful. And now I would rather hasten away from Brussels, and wander on to oth...

When I look at the heading of this chapter, and read there the name of a little town upon the Rhine--which, doubtless, the majority of my readers has visited--and reflect on how...

“I left off at that flattering portion of my history where I became a horse-dealer; in this capacity I travelled over a considerable portion of Ireland, now larking it in the We...

‘Without tiring you with any irrelevant details of the family and relatives of my hero, if I dare call him such, I may mention that he was the second son of an old Belgian famil...

‘Will you please to tell me, Mr. O’Leary,’ said Laura, in the easy tone of one who asked for information’s sake, ‘what are your plans here; for up to this moment I only perceive...

Stretched upon a large old-fashioned sofa, where a burgomaster might have reclined with ‘ample room and verge enough,’ in all the easy abandonment of dressing-gown and slippers;...

I wish any one would explain to me why it is that the tastes and pursuits of nations are far more difficult of imitation than their languages or institutions. Nothing is more co...

I left Cassel with a heart far heavier than I had brought into it some weeks before. The poor fellow, whose remains I followed to the grave, was ever in my thoughts, and all our...

If the noise and bustle which attend a wedding, like trumpets in a battle, are intended as provisions against reflection, so firmly do I feel, the tortures of sea-sickness, are...

If I were not sketching a real personage, and retailing an anecdote once heard, I should pronounce the Hofrath von Froriep a fictitious character, for which reason I bear you no...

When some years ago we took the liberty, in a volume of our so-called “Confessions,” to introduce to our reader’s acquaintance the gentleman whose name figures in the title page...

It was through no veneration for the memory of Van Hoogen-dorp’s adventure, that I found myself one morning at Antwerp. I like the old town: I like its quaint, irregular streets...

It was growing late on a fine evening in autumn, as I, a solitary pedestrian, drew near the little town of Spa. From the time of my leaving Chaude Fontaine, I lingered along the...

Sir Harry Wycherley was of an old Hampshire family, who, entering the army when a mere boy, contrived, before he came of age, so completely to encumber a very large estate that...

“Which is the way to the theatre?” said I to an urchin who stood at the inn door, in that professional attitude of waiting, your street runners, in all cities, can so well assum...

I have already taken occasion to indoctrinate my reader on the subject of what I deem the most perfect species of table d’hôte. May I now beg of him, or her, if she will be kind...

Englishmen keep their solemnity and respectful deportment for a church; foreigners reserve theirs for a gambling-table. Never was I more struck than by the decorous stillness an...

‘It was already near four o’clock ere I bethought me of making any preparation for my lecture. The day had been, throughout, one of those heavy and sultry ones that autumn so of...

‘Summa diligentia,’ as we used to translate it at school, ‘on the top of the diligence,’ I wagged along towards the Rhine. A weary and a lonely way it is; indeed, I half believe...

It was a strange ordinance of the age that made watering-places equally the resort of the sick and the fashionable, the dyspeptic and the dissipated. One cannot readily see by w...

‘The third day of the disastrous battle of Leipsic was drawing to a close, as the armies of the coalition made one terrible and fierce attack, in concert, against the Imperial f...

Old Woodcock says, that if Providence had not made him a Justice of the Peace, he’d have been a vagabond himself. No such kind interference prevailed in my case. I was a vagabon...

Two hours after, I was enjoying the pleasant fire of the Hôtel de Flandre, where I arrived in time for table d’hôte, not a little to the surprise of the host and six waiters, wh...

Nothing is more distinct than the two classes of people who are to be met with in the morning and in the afternoon, sauntering along the _allées_ of a German watering-place. The...

Morgan O’Dogherty was wrong--and, sooth to say, he was not often so-- when he pronounced a Mess to be ‘the perfection of dinner society.’ In the first place, there can be no per...

The Eil Wagen, into whose bowels I had committed myself on leaving Frankfort, rolled along for twenty-four hours before I could come to any determination as to whither I should...

I narrowly escaped being sent to the guardhouse for the night, as I approached Erfurt--for seeing that it was near nine o’clock when the gates of the fortress are closed, I quic...

He who expects to find these “Loiterings” of mine of any service as a “Guide Book” to the Continent, or a “Voyager’s Manual,” will be sorely disappointed; as well might he endea...

In somewhat less than a fortnight’s time I had made a bowing acquaintance with some half-dozen good subjects of Hesse, and formed a chatting intimacy with some three or four fre...

It was in the winter of the year 1806, the first week of December, the frost was setting in, and I resolved to pay a visit to my brother, whom I hadn’t seen for forty years; he...

Frankfort is a German Liverpool, minus the shipping, and consequently has few attractions for the mere traveller. The statue of ‘Ariadne,’ by the Danish sculptor Danneker, is al...