1 Have you ever been greatly influenced by a culture that is different from your own?

2 Do you think that some experiences elevate people’s spirit while some may produce negative effects?

The author is fervently interested in exploring ________, ________ and ________.

1 I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm¹ of my parents and the emolument² of the town-crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles³ about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighboring villages, and added greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer’s day to the summit of the most distant hill, whence⁴ I stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita⁵, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.

2 This rambling propensity⁶ strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring⁷ their contents I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wonder about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships, bound to distant climes⁸: with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft⁹ myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!

3 Further reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination into more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely a lover of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification¹⁰, for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with¹¹ wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine, —no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime¹² and beautiful of natural scenery.

4 But Europe held forth the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly cultivated society, the quaint¹³ peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise. Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement—to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity—to loiter about the ruined castle—to meditate on the falling tower—to escape, in short, from the commonplace realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs¹⁴ of the past.

5 I had, beside all this, an earnest desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our great in America: not a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been almost withered¹⁵ by the shade into which they cast me; for there is nothing so baleful¹⁶ to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the words of various philosophers, that all animals degenerated¹⁷ in America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the Hudson, and in this idea I was confirmed, by observing the comparative importance and swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who, I was assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated.

6 It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion gratified. I have wandered through different countries, and witnessed many of the shifting scenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied them with the eye of a philosopher; but rather with the sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print-stop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature¹⁸, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their port-folios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have taken down for the purpose, my heart almost falls me at finding how my idle humor has led me aside from the great objects studied by every regular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal disappointment with an unlucky landscape painter, who had travelled on the continent, but, following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had sketched in nooks and corners and by-places. His sketch-book was accordingly crowed with cottages and landscapes and obscure ruins; but he had neglected to paint St. Peter’s, or the Coliseum; the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples, and had not a single glacier or volcano in his whole collection.

1 What does “the emolument of the town-crier” mean? (para. 1)

2 How did the author find the scenery of his country? (para. 3)

3 What is the charm of Europe, according to the author? (para. 4)

4 How is the shade of a great man of a city baleful to a small man?(para. 5)

1 She sat up in a________.

2 He left Britain for the sunnier c________ of Southern France.

3 She began d________ newspapers when she was only 12.

4 Only inside do you appreciate the building’s true g________.

5 Mr. Bint has a p________ to put off decisions to the last minute.

6 S________ music floats on a scented summer breeze to the spot where you lie.

7 For most of the year, the area is ________ ________ tourists.