VI ON DISCOVERY

There is a great consolation¹ lying all bottled and matured for those who choose to take it, in the modern world—and yet how few turn to it and drink the bracing² draft! It is a consolation for dust and frequency and fatigue³ and despair—this consolation is the Discovery of the World.

The world has no end to it. You can discover one town which you had thought well known, or one quarter of the town, or one house in the quarter of the town, or one room in that house, or one picture in that room. The avenues of discovery open out infinite in number and quite a little distance from their centre (which is yourself and your local, tired, repeated experience) these avenues diverge⁴ outwards⁵ and lead to the most amazingly different things.

[Pg 39]

You can take some place of which you have heard so often and in so vulgar a connotation that you could wish never to hear of it again, and coming there you will find it holding you, and you will enjoy many happy surprises, unveiling things you could not dream were there.

How much more true is it not, then, that discovery awaits you if you will take the least little step off the high road, or the least little exploration into the past of a place you visit.

Most men inhabiting a countryside know nothing of its aspect even quite close to their homes, save as it is seen from the main roads. If they will but cross a couple of fields or so, they may come, for the first time in many years of habitation, upon a landscape that seems quite new and a sight of their own hills which makes them look like the hills of a strange country.

In youth we all know this. In youth and early manhood we wonder what is behind some rise of land, or on the other side of some wood which bounded our horizon in childhood. Then[Pg 40] comes a day when we manfully explore the unknown places and go to find what we shall find.

As life advances we imagine that all this chance of discovery has been taken from us by our increased experience. It is an illusion. If we are so dull it is we that have changed and not the world; and what is more we can recover from that dulness, and there is a simple medicine for it, which is to repeat the old experiment: to go out and see what we may see.

Some will grant this true of the sudden little new discoveries quite close to home, but not of travel. Travel, they think, must always be to-day by some known road to some known place, with dust upon the mind at the setting out and at the coming in. It is a great error. You can choose some place too famous in Europe and even too peopled and too large, and yet make the most ample discoveries there.

"Oh, but," a man will say, "most places have been so written of that one knows them already long before seeing them."

No: one does nothing of the kind. Even[Pg 41] the pictured and the storied places are full enough of newness if one will but shake off routine and if one will but peer.

Speak to five men of some place which they have all visited, perhaps together, and find out what each noticed most: you will be amazed at the five different impressions.

Enter by some new entry a town which hitherto you had always entered by one fixed⁶ way, and again vary your entry, and again, and you will see a new town every time.

There are many, many thousand Englishmen who know the wonderful sight of Rouen from the railway bridge below the town, for that lies on the high road to Paris, and there are many thousand, though not so many, who know Rouen from Bon-Secours. There are a few hundred who know it from the approach by the great woods to the North. There are a dozen or so perhaps who have come in from the East, walking from Picardy. The great town lying in its cup of hills is quite different every way.

[Pg 42]

There is a view of Naples which has been photographed and printed and painted until we are all tired of it. It is a view taken from the hill which makes the northern horn of the Bay; there is a big pine tree in the foreground and Vesuvius smoking in the background, and I will bargain that most people who read this have seen that view upon a postcard, or in a shop window, and that a good many of them would rightly say that it was the most hackneyed thing in Europe.

Now some years ago I had occasion to go to Naples, a town I had always avoided for that very reason—that one heard of it until one was tired and that this view had become like last year's music-hall tunes⁷.

I went, not of my own choice but because I had to go, and when I got there I made as complete a discovery as ever Columbus made or those sailors who first rounded Africa and found the Indian Seas.

Naples was utterly⁸ unlike anything I had imagined. Vesuvius was not a cone⁹ smoking[Pg 43] upon the horizon—it was a great angry pyramid toppling right above me. The town was not a lazy, dirty town with all the marks of antiquity¹⁰ and none of energy. It was alive with commerce and all the evils and all the good of commerce. It was angrily alive; it was like a wasp¹¹ nest.

I will state the plain truth at the risk of being thought paradoxical. Naples recalled to me an American seaboard town so vividly¹² that I could have thought myself upon the Pacific. I could have gone on for days digging into all this new experience, turning it over and fructifying¹³ it. My business allowed me not twenty-four hours, but the vision was one I shall never forget, and it was as completely new and as wholly creative, or re-creative, of the mind, as is that land-fall which an adventurous¹⁴ sailor makes when he finds a new island at dawn upon a sea not yet travelled.

Every one, therefore, should go out to discover, five miles from home, or five hundred.[Pg 44] Every one should assure himself against the cheating tedium¹⁵ which books and maps create in us, that the world is perpetually new: and oddly enough it is not a matter of money.

1 consolation   

n.安慰，慰问

参考例句：

• The children were a great consolation to me at that time.那时孩子们成了我的莫大安慰。
• This news was of little consolation to us.这个消息对我们来说没有什么安慰。

2 bracing   

adj.令人振奋的

参考例句：

• The country is bracing itself for the threatened enemy invasion. 这个国家正准备奋起抵抗敌人的入侵威胁。
• The atmosphere in the new government was bracing. 新政府的气氛是令人振奋的。

3 fatigue   

n.疲劳，劳累

参考例句：

• The old lady can't bear the fatigue of a long journey.这位老妇人不能忍受长途旅行的疲劳。
• I have got over my weakness and fatigue.我已从虚弱和疲劳中恢复过来了。

4 diverge   

v.分叉，分歧，离题，使...岔开，使转向

参考例句：

• This is where our opinions diverge from each other.这就是我们意见产生分歧之处。
• Don't diverge in your speech.发言不要离题。

5 outwards   

adj.外面的，公开的，向外的；adv.向外；n.外形

参考例句：

• Does this door open inwards or outwards?这门朝里开还是朝外开？
• In lapping up a fur,they always put the inner side outwards.卷毛皮时，他们总是让内层朝外。

6 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

7 tunes   

n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• a potpourri of tunes 乐曲集锦
• When things get a bit too much, she simply tunes out temporarily. 碰到事情太棘手时，她干脆暂时撒手不管。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

9 cone   

n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果

参考例句：

• Saw-dust piled up in a great cone.锯屑堆积如山。
• The police have sectioned off part of the road with traffic cone.警察用锥形路标把部分路面分隔开来。

10 antiquity   

n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹

参考例句：

• The museum contains the remains of Chinese antiquity.博物馆藏有中国古代的遗物。
• There are many legends about the heroes of antiquity.有许多关于古代英雄的传说。

11 wasp   

n.黄蜂，蚂蜂

参考例句：

• A wasp stung me on the arm.黄蜂蜇了我的手臂。
• Through the glass we can see the wasp.透过玻璃我们可以看到黄蜂。

12 vividly   

adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地

参考例句：

• The speaker pictured the suffering of the poor vividly.演讲者很生动地描述了穷人的生活。
• The characters in the book are vividly presented.这本书里的人物写得栩栩如生。

13 fructifying   

v.结果实( fructify的现在分词 )；使结果实，使多产，使土地肥沃

参考例句：

14 adventurous   

adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的　

参考例句：

• I was filled with envy at their adventurous lifestyle.我很羨慕他们敢于冒险的生活方式。
• He was predestined to lead an adventurous life.他注定要过冒险的生活。

15 tedium   

n.单调；烦闷

参考例句：

• We played games to relieve the tedium of the journey.我们玩游戏，来解除旅行的沉闷。
• In myself I could observe the following sources of tedium. 从我自己身上，我所观察到的烦闷的根源有下列一些。