42 HERBERT SPENCER

sedative amenities of which proved a useful prophy-
lactic in after years.

Italy,—Of Spencer's Tour in Italy the du/eticgrap/jy
gives us some interesting reminiscences. He arrived
in Naples in a state of extreme exhaustion, wearied
with the voyage, wearied with a menu in which tunny
was the pilct tie r/sistance> and finding comfort only
in the shelter of his Inverness cape, And yet, the
day after his arrival, the author of &*'/<*/ Sttttitv
might have been seen giving swift chase to an
audacious thief who had taken advantage of the
philosopher's preoccupation to abstract his opera-
glass. " Most likely had the young fellow had a
knife about him I should have suffered, perhaps
fatally, for my imprudence," A few dayi liter, the
same characteristic rashness impelled him to ascend
the burning mountain without a guide and at great
risk. "How to account for the judicial blindness I
displayed, I do not know; unless by regarding it as
an extreme instance of the tendency which I perceive
in myself to be enslaved by a plan once formed—a
tendency to become for a time possessed by one
thought to the exclusion of others,11

Nothing that Spencer saw in Italy impreiwed him
so much as "the dead town*' of Pompeii* Tht* man
who " took but little interest in what art* cftlied
histories" was stirred by this concrete historical
fossil "It aroused sentiments such m no written
record had ever done." He enjoyed Rome, but
rather for its harmonious colouring than for its
historical associations, of which he hid na vivid
perception. He was more* irritated thtn pleued by
the old masters. He got mote picuure from they for rest, attracted partly by the fact