occurrence a vividness and actuality that were later to be reckoned among his most conspicuous endowments. In Leyden, too, he met the Honourable Charles Gordon, son of the Earl of Aberdeen, whom he invited to visit him in Utrecht. "Mr. Boswell," said Gordon, "I would willingly come and see you for a day at Utrecht, but I am afraid I should tire you." "Sir," replied Boswell, "I defy you to tire me for one day."

There is something significant in the absence from the Commonplace Book of the usual topics discussed by travellers, and the presence, instead, of such anecdotes as those just set down. Neither the canals in Holland nor the Alps in Switzerland seem to have impressed him. His indifference to architecture was complete, and the only pictures that I remember his having mentioned are the paintings found at Herculaneum, in which he felt an antiquarian rather than an artistic interest. The outward aspect of cities meant little to him. He called Berlin "a fine city," and said, at Rome, that he viewed the ancient remains with "venerable enthusiasm"; but Utrecht, Florence, Venice, Naples elicited no praise from his ordinarily enthusiastic pen. Johnson's advice may account for a measure of this indifference, for he had counselled Boswell to go where there were courts and learned men; he was "of Lord Essex's opinion, rather to

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go an hundred miles to speak with one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town.' It was Johnson who found water "the same everywhere," and thought the Giants' Causeway "worth seeing, but not worth going to see."

Still, Boswell's indifference to scenery and to pictorial art is more than "a plume from the wing of Johnson" (as Wilkes would have called it), and these anecdotes contain the explanation. Conversation, it is to be remembered, was ever for him the purest joy in life; in travelling, it is the means of cultivating what the century loved to call "universality." The object of travel is to become a citizen of the world, rather than an arbiter elegantiarum. In the course of his travels, Boswell will associate with his own countrymen or not, according as he may profit by intercourse with them; for he has come abroad as a philosopher, not as a gypsy. Therefore, in learning to appreciate the civilisation of the Dutch or the Italians, he does not deem it necessary to repudiate his own country and strive to be mistaken for a native in the land where he happens to be. Buildings and canals and fortifications may be left to blear-eyed antiquarians with their tiresome pedantry. And so he recorded anecdotes and bon mots, not all of them clever, it is true, but, as a whole, reflecting a life crowded with human faces and memories, a

life in which he had been not a mere spectator but a participant. For a biographer what training could have been better? It was to be his function to exhibit life in panoramic fulness and detail, to catch the conversation of the salon and the club, and yet to avoid the dulness of realism by plucking merely the flower of that life. These anecdotes are, as it were, his early studies, his first attempts, his sketch-book, sein Hand zu weisen.

Of his pride in his store of this kind he leaves us in no doubt. He tells how, years later, as he was one day writing in his "journal of conversations," General Paoli came upon him, and, noting his occupation, requested him to read something from the book. When the young man was long in selecting a specimen, Paoli taunted him: "Reason says I am a deer lost in a wood. It is difficult to find me. "I had," adds Boswell, "nothing to answer at the time, but afterwards - I forget how long I said, "The wood is crowded with deer. There are so many good things, one is at a loss which to choose."" To him it was a well-spring of wisdom, free from the taint of the study; wisdom exhibiting herself as a glorified savoir-faire-wisdom, that is, in its actual application to life by men of the keenest minds. Conversation, he asserted, which could be remembered and recorded, was like the rich freight which one brings home from a

journey that has been profitable as well as pleasant.

The Christmas vacation was followed by another term, and that, in due course, by the summer holidays; and it was clear to Boswell that it was time for him to be gone from among the Dutch. The time had come to "proceed" to the glorious south. But how was it to be managed?

At this moment luck favoured him once more. Late in June there returned from Scotland to the Continent a man the romance of whose early years had been equalled by the exalted station which he had attained in his age. This was George Keith, the Earl Marischal of Scotland, the intimate friend of Voltaire and Rousseau, the favourite and trusted adviser of Frederick the Great. In youth he had twice been out campaigning for the Stuarts, and had found it well, after the failure of the campaign of 1719, to live abroad. He came under the protection of the King of Prussia, whose personal ambassador he was at the courts of France and of Spain. Upon his communication of valuable political intelligence to William Pitt, he was pardoned by George II, as that monarch was nearing the end of his life. The Earl returned to Scotland for a time. He was now nearly seventy years old, and had probably made up his mind to end his days in his native land. During this residence he met Lord Auchinleck, with whom he became inti

mate. He had served, in youth, under the Earl of Mar, a relative of Mrs. Boswell. But his peaceful retirement was interrupted in the spring of 1764, when he was urgently invited by his Prussian master to return to Potsdam. This he agreed to do.

Now, just at this time Lord Auchinleck was in doubt - as usual-regarding the best course to pursue with his son James. The boy was eager to travel and see life. Beyond a doubt, the matter was laid before the Earl Marischal, and a decision reached that young Boswell was to visit the German courts, and to travel in the company of the Earl as far as Berlin. To Lord Auchinleck it must have seemed a safe and happy solution of a pressing problem.

Lord Keith left England on the seventh of June, and was in company with a young Turkish lady, Emetulla by name, who appears in Boswell's notes as "Mademoiselle Ameté, the Turk." She was the Earl's adopted daughter, a lady whom his brother, General Keith, is said to have rescued at the siege of Oczakow.

At some spot or other, then, in the Low Countries or in Western Germany, Boswell joined the Earl and his fair charge, and a remarkable trio they must have been: the venerable diplomat, who was received with all possible attention whereever the party stopped; the silent Turkish lady,