In all this we see that guide-books are very important to us, and that there is little or no fault to be found with them, since even the worst give some guidance and enable us in after times mentally to revisit distant places.  It may then be said that there are really no bad guide-books, and that those that are good in the highest sense are beyond praise.  A reverential sentiment, which is almost religious in character, connects itself in our minds with the very name of Murray.  It is, however, possible to make an injudicious use of these books, and by so doing to miss the fine point of many a pleasure.  The very fact that these books are guides to us and invaluable, and that we readily acquire the habit of taking them about with us and consulting them at frequent intervals, comes between us and that rarest and most exquisite enjoyment to be experienced amidst novel scenes.  He that visits a place new to him for some special object rightly informs himself of all that the book can tell him.  The knowledge may be useful; pleasure is with him a secondary object.  But if pleasure be the main object, it will only be experienced in the highest degree by him who goes without book and discovers what old Fuller called the “observables” for himself.  There will be no mental pictures previously formed; consequently what is found will not disappoint.  When the mind has been permitted to dwell beforehand on any scene, then, however beautiful or grand it may be, the element of surprise is wanting and admiration is weak.  The delight has been discounted.

My own plan, which may be recommended only to those who go out for pleasure—­who value happiness above useless (otherwise useful) knowledge, and the pictures that live and glow in memory above albums and collections of photographs—­is not to look at a guide-book until the place it treats of has been explored and left behind.

The practical person, to whom this may come as a new idea and who wishes not to waste any time in experiments, would doubtless like to hear how the plan works.  He will say that he certainly wants all the happiness to be got out of his rambles, but it is clear that without the book in his pocket he would miss many interesting things:  Would the greater degree of pleasure experienced in the others be a sufficient compensation?  I should say that he would gain more than he would lose; that vivid interest and pleasure in a few things is preferable to that fainter, more diffused feeling experienced in the other case.  Again, we have to take into account the value to us of the mental pictures gathered in our wanderings.  For we know that only when a scene is viewed emotionally, when it produces in us a shock of pleasure, does it become a permanent possession of the mind; in other words, it registers an image which, when called up before the inner eye, is capable of reproducing a measure of the original delight.

In recalling those scenes which have given me the greatest happiness, the images of which are most vivid and lasting, I find that most of them are of scenes or objects which were discovered, as it were, by chance, which I had not heard of, or else had heard of and forgotten, or which I had not expected to see.  They came as a surprise, and in the following instance one may see that it makes a vast difference whether we do or do not experience such a sensation.