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indeed for earnest or practical people generally—but whether the reader will be interested in what I may say of them, will depend very much on what are the tastes or temper with which, if occasion offered, he would visit these scenes himself. Would he visit them eager to unearth prehistoric pots for museums ? to throw a new light on the relations of Phoenician art to Hellenic ? or else to collect facts with which to discredit the Colonial Office ? or to see what money might be made out of the place or people ? Would he be a man with a special object, or still worse, a man with a special subject? If he would, let him throw this book in the fire. It is not written for him—it would certainly not appeal to him. If it appeals to anyone, it will appeal to a class of men who take to travel in a different spirit altogether, and who frankly admit that what they seek under other skies is neither profitable, nor useful, nor edify-ing information of any kind, but merely this—the stimulant of a new mental experience. No doubt their taste in this respect is for nothing but a more refined form of dram-drinking; and that perhaps may be thought sufficiently immoral and frivolous. And yet such men after all are the only true travellers, for it is they alone who really love change for the sake of change, taking it into their system as a smoker inhales smoke, and finding it exhilarate them like a kind of spiritual haschish. All other travellers are travellers merely by accident. They go to distant places for some definite object, which it so 2 IN AN ENCHANTED ISLAND

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