Sublime

What is a country but a life sentence?

unknown landscapes. Again and again a man full of years is merely the corroboration of the dreams of his youth. The sense of fancy growing out of the sense of fact—which makes all healthy personalities and gives a touch of romance and glory to all of life—first appears as the unrestrained imaginings of youth.

Jan Morris (you can learn from anything she’s written, but take a look at the essays collected in Journeys and Destinations for a starter); Paul Theroux (his first travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar, and his three-decade-later follow-up, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, are arguably his best); Tim Cahill (his collections are audacious and

More beautiful than anything in Guilin.”

Patrick Leigh Fermor would be quite high on any list, starting with The Traveller’s Tree, a wonderful book about the Caribbean, absolutely splendid. Everything he does, he has a sort of magic touch with. And I think Evelyn Waugh is very observant, very funny. I’ve read his books more than once.

A theologian, essayist, orator, and poet, Emerson is variously described as America’s own philosopher, our first literary giant, the father of the environmental movement, and the founder of what literary critic Harold Bloom calls “the American religion,” a distinctive blend of individualism and self-reliance. Emerson’s philosophy,