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Auckland Star, Volume V, Issue 1480, 7 November 1874, Page 5 (Supplement)

enough- Other men, who labour hard during the rest of the twelvemonth, Quite fail at the holiday. It is, in fact, to some men the most trying thing they have to do in the year, and at the end of it they gladly come back to their ordinary work to recover themselves. Between these two extremes people make holiday just as they do everything e l se -with all possible intermediate degrees of success and failure. It is as well, no doubt, that there should be a popular illusion that holiday-making is the easiest thing in the world, andthat everybody may and should succeed in it. It puts people on their mettle in trying to be gay, just as they should be in tryin<* to be good ; the result being that many people strive to persuade themselves that they feel a little merrier than they really are. We should be sorry to injure the superstition. But, in spite of it, people will by-aud-by be returning to town secretly conscious that they have failed in this new duty's ri<rhl discharged. Perhaps one or two hints may be set down for anybody who may see his his way to using them. It is of no use for some peple to try to make holiday near home, no matter how beautiful the spot may be. A sense of sheer distance from the home place is needed. This may argue some stolidity of nature, but if the stolidity is there it had better be respected. There are not a few persons in every large city whose spirits rise as the railway stations left behind multiply. So long as they do not know on incontestable evidence bhat they are far away from the brick 'ttdlderness, they still feel it. For some a hundred miles is enough to break this spell ; for others three hundred will but just fully do it. A special kind of coaxing of the imagination may even be asked ; a shorter distance, including a proportion of water, will answer for a longer journey all on land. On the other hand, there are, doubtless, eccentric individuals capable of getting a more sinister gratification from hiding near town and yet cleverly escaping its usual calls on them. To dodge the city is rather a high pleasure in its way. But before a man tries this kind of holiday he had better make quite sure that he belongs to the class. It may be laid down as a rule that for the majority of persons a journey long enough to give a sense of distance is the first condition of a holiday. It is a large presumption in favour of change, and of itself goes a good way with many people in inducing a belief that more change is had than really falls to their lot.. The only legitimate exceptions to this rule are the lucky people who have hobbies. A geologist may stop at the first bare bit of interesting earth he meets with ; a botanist is as far away in the bush as anywhere else. But an ordinary unhobbied person who has a misgiving of his holiday—unless he is wearied of the railway in his usual occupations beforehand — had better lengthen nhis journey backwards and forwards. The distance will be a fact for his fancy, if he has any, to build upon. If he is not aware when he gets hack home of having had any holiday, he will at least have the feeling of having travelled. Another obvious remark on this subject is that any one not living on the coast can only at great risk leave out of his holiday the sight somewhere of water on a large scale. The expectatation has grown so habitual in most of us that very few persons on their return could avoid a sense of incompleteness in their holiday if they had not seen a great liquid expanse. In the absence of the sea, they must have a decent-sized lake along with their mountain or moor ; no extent of utterly dry land would fully serve if it had not, at the least, a waterfall to be visited. There may be physiological reasons for this, but without subtly seeking for them it is a sufficient explanation of the overmastering charm of water that it is for most of us the easiest generalization of change possible. For all who are out of sight of it at home the sea or a lake makes a novelty asking no effort to recognise it. So soon as it stretches before us there is no longer any doubt that we are holi-day-making ; it is a patent continuing proof that things about us have really altered. A further reason of the great popularity of water-scenes doubtless is the ease with which they are observed. Wherever the view becomes liquid instead of dry there is felt to be a relief of strain. To look at a landscape —even your pi'ettiest arrangement of village-roofs, church-spires, meadows, and woods, is a complex task. Information is needed, knowledge of various kinds, and a certain degree of taste, merely to understand its merits. But a water-view tasks no one in its beholding, while its own ceaseless stir, its varying appearances from hour to hour, from moment to moment, give the onlooker an illusive sense of something done on his own part. The busiest, easiest, most deceitful of all idleness is to watch the sea. A mountain i-ange or a forest, to those who do not live in such scenes, offers strangeness on a scale is effected from the first moment °f your sight of them. But it is toilsome to exhaust their attractions ; you nave to see them from many points, and to go to each point. Once gain -8 margin of the water, and what has to be looked at comes to you. The conclusion all this points to is, that anybody who arranges his holiday as a wholly dry one had better do so deliberately, having made up his mind to it, a&cl he must expect a comparatively

hard holiday. Those who are not sure of possessing good holiday-making capabilities will show their wisdom by relying much more upon water ./than land in any trip they may make;— Pall Mall Gazette.