Without a certain superstitious belief in luck, so flattering to that sagacity which would fain never be at fault, and to that enterprise which cannot bear to own itself baffled, save preternaturally, small crosses and disappointments would sometimes be hard to endure. Nothing is so convenient and so soothing as fatalism! The people who are always overturned in whatever vehicle they travel (there are such) set forth on their journeys secure from dismay and surprise. Those whose lot it is for ever to lose at cards, have the conviction for a warning; and a winning stands them instead of a miracle. I have never returned from a journey without its having yielded me more than I expected in amount of present enjoyment, and of pictures so precious as a treasure stored up against the dark days of laborious confinement or exhausted health. But I must still make an exception or two to this general rule in my own private mind. My luck is to have the stormiest winds that blow, and the roughest seas that roar, whenever I want to travel along “the silent highway” by which, unhappily, every Englishman is compelled to leave his island. My luck it is, never to see Bouffé, or to hear a note of the music of M. Berlioz, in Paris: my luck in Germany is to make vain attempts at rectifying my first judgment of Berlin Opera, and at bringing my voice into concord with theirs who have described it as nothing short of the choicest and most magnificent perfection.