You remember De Sauty? Perched on his steadfast stool, in a deserted telegraph-house, hard by that bay of the broken promise, De Sauty, like Poe's raven, "still was sitting, still was sitting," watching, in forlorn, but hopeful loneliness, the paralyzed tongue of the Atlantic Cable, to catch the utterances that never came for all his patient coaxing; and ever and anon he iterated, feebly and more feebly, as if all his sinking soul he did outpour into the words, that melancholy monotone which was his only stock and store,-" All right! De Sauty."

I never did like ravens, and I do not like De Sautys; for if, indeed, it were all right with the De Sautys, it would be all wrong with certain things that are most dear to the romantic part of me; since De Sauty is to my imagination the living type of that indiscriminate sacrilege of trade which would penetrate the beautiful illusions of remoteness, as through an opera-glass, which would tie the ends of the earth together and toss it over shoulder like a peddler's bundle, to "swop" quaint curiosities, inspiring relics, and solemn symbols, for British prints or American pig-iron. Puck us no Pucks, De Sauty, nor constrict our planet's rotundity with any forty-minute girdle; for in these days of inflating crinoline and ever-increasing circumference of hooped skirts, it becomes us to leave our Mother Earth at least in the fashion, nor strive to reduce her to such unmodish dimensions that one may circumnavigate her in as little time, comparatively, as he may make the circuit of Miss Flora MacFlimsey.

I beseech you, do not call that nonsense; it is but a good-natured way of stating the case in the aspect it presents from the De Sauty point of view; for tightly laced as poor Mother Earth al

ship stays, growing small by degrees and beautifully less, she needs but the fortyminute girdle of Puck De Sauty to so contract her waist at the equator that any impudent traveller may span it with a carpet-bag and an umbrella.

On that memorable night of the Cable Celebration, when so many paper lanterns and so many enlightened New Yorkers were sold in the name of De Sauty,-when all the streets and all the people were alive with gas, - when we fired off rockets and Roman candles and spread-eagle speeches in illustrious exuberance,—when the city children lit their little dips, and the City Fathers lit their City Hall,-when we hung out our banners, and clanged our bells, and banged our guns, when there was Glory to God in the highest steeple, and Peace on Earth in the lowest cellar,- I drifted down the Broadway current of a mighty flood of folk, a morose and miserable sentimentalist.

I had seen locomotives, those Yankee Juggernauts, drive, roaring and ruthless, over the beautiful bodies of fine old travellers' fictions; and once, in Burmah, I had beheld a herd of stately elephants plunge and scoot, scampering and squealing, like pigs on a railroad, away from the steam scream of a new-fangled manof-war. I had witnessed those monstrous sacrileges, and survived, — had even, when locomotive and steamer were passed, picked up my beautiful fictions again, and called back my panic-stricken elephants with the gong of imagination; but here were Gulliver and Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor torn from their golden thrones, and this insolent De Sauty, crowned with zinc and copper and sceptred with gutta-percha, set up in their places to the tune of " All Right."

"I will build you a house of gold, and you shall be my Padshah Begum, some day," said the whimsically cruel King of

66

Nothing is easier, Sire, than to see how she would look," said the Khan, as he returned with the quails.

So a gown, and other articles of European female attire, were sent for to the Khan's house; for he was a married man; and when they were brought, Nuna was told to retire and put them on. The quail-fight proceeded on the table.

Then Nuna reappeared in her new costume. A more miserable transformation it is hardly possible to imagine. The clothes hung loosely about her, in forlorn dowdyness. She felt that she was ridiculous. All grace was gone, all beauty. It was distressing to witness her mortified plight.

The King and the Khan laughed heartily, while scalding tears coursed down poor Nuna's cheeks. The other nautchgirls, jealous, had no pity for her; they chuckled at her disgrace, turning up their pretty noses, as they whispered,-"Serve her right, the brazen minx!"

For days, nay, for weeks, did poor Nuna thus appear, a laughing-stock. She implored permission to leave the court, and return to her wretched home in Cashmere; but that was refused. In the midst of the Mohurrim, she suddenly disappeared. There were none to inquire for her.*

Oh, they may say what they please about the irresistible march of civilization, and clearing the way for Webster's SpellPrivate Life of an Eastern King.

ing-Book,—about pumps for Afric's sunny fountains, and Fulton ferry-boats for India's coral strand; but there's nothing in what the Atlantic Cable gives, like that it takes away from the heart of the man who has looked the Sphinx in the face and dreamed with the Brahmin under his own banian. Spare the shrinking Nunas of our poetry your Europe-fashions!

Because the De Sautys are scientifically virtuous, shall there be no more barbaric cakes and ale for us? Because they are joined to their improved Shanghaes, must we let our phoenixes alone? Must we deny our crocodiles when they preach to us codfish? And shall we abstain from crying, "In the name of the Prophet, figs!" in order that they may bawl, "In the name of Brother Jonathan, doughnuts"?

Yes, the world is visibly shrinking in the hard grip of commerce, and the magic and the marvels that filled our childish souls with adventurous longing are fading away in the change. Let us make haste, then, before it is too late,- before the very Sphinx is guessed, and the Boodh himself baptized in Croton water; and, like the Dutchmen in Hans Christian Andersen's story, who put on the galoches of happiness and stepped out into the Middle Ages, let us slip our feet into the sandals of imagination and step out into the desert or the jungle.

One who expressed his Oriental experiences in an epic of fresh and thrilling sensations has written," If a man be not born of his mother with a natural Chifney bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society, -a time for not liking tamed people,- -a time for not dancing quadrilles,—a time for pretending that Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people are greater in death than the first living lord of the treasury,-a time, in short, for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the opera, and all our most cherished institutions. A little while you are free and unlabelled, like the ground you compass; but civilization is coming, and coming; you and your

much-loved waste-lands will be surely inclosed, and sooner or later you will be brought down to a state of utter usefulness, the ground will be curiously sliced into acres and roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly on your saddle, you will be caught, you will be taken up from travel, as a colt from grass, to be trained, and matched, and run.

"All this in time: but first come Continental tours, and the moody longing for Eastern travel; your native downs and moors can hold you no longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches of free-land,-you thread your way through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities.

"There, on the other side of the river, (you can swim it with one arm,) there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for not being a vagrant, for not being a robber, for not being armed and houseless. There is comfort in that, health, comfort, and strength, to one who is dying from very weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged, deserving, accomplished, pedantic, pains-taking governess, Europe."

Better the abodes of the anthropophagi, the "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," than no place to get away to at all; for to every vigorous soul there one day comes a longing, by the light of which magnificent distances appear beautiful, and the possibilities of infinite far-offness delicious; to the Christian traveller, who exults in the faith that "each remotest nation shall learn Messiah's name," how dear is that remoteness which renders the promise sublime! It is these considerations which make us, oldfashioned Pucks, whose performances go no farther than putting a girdle round about the earth in fifty months, object to telegraphs, and protest against De Sauty.

Among your books and your lectures, you must have observed that there are several well-defined and widely distinct kinds of traveller. One is the professional

tourist, who formally and statedly "sets out," in his own deliberate way, packed, marked, and paid through; he is shipped like preserved meats, hermetically sealed to foreign impressions, and warranted to keep in any climate,-the same snug, well-arranged "commercial traveller" who went abroad for materials, for which you are to pay; and when he has laid in the necessary stock,- the identical stock as per original advices,- he comes back again, and that is all,-the very same as to himself and his baggage, except that the latter is heavier by the addition of a corpulent carpet-bag bloated with facts and figures, the aspect of the country, the dimensions of monuments, the customs of the people, their productions and manufactures; he might as well have done his tour around his own library, with a copy of Bayard Taylor's Cyclopædia of Travel, and an assortment of stereoscopic views, for all the freshness of impression or originality of narrative you'll get from him,from whom preserve us! Give us, rather, that truer traveller who goes by the accommodation-train of Whim, and whom, in the language of conductors, you may take up or put down anywhere, because he is no "dead-head," nor "ticketed through." This is he of whom I have spoken elsewhere,-in the magic mirror of whose memory (as to the last he saw of this wonder or of that) "a stony statuesqueness prevails, to produce an effect the weirdest of all; for there every living thing stands arrested in the attitude or gesture it presented at the fine instant to which his thought returns to find it,— seized in the midst, it may be, of the gayest, most spirited, or most passionate action,— laughter, dance, rage, conflict; and so fixed as unchangeable as the stone faces of the gods, forever and forever."

In the midst of a Burmese jungle I have tried that sad experiment by its reverse, and, gazing into my magic mirror, have beheld my own dear home, and the old, familiar faces,—all stony, pale, and dim. At such times, how painfully the exile's heart is tried by the apparition of any object, however insignificant, to which

his happy childhood was accustomed! I think my heart was never more sharply wrung than once at Prome, in the porch of a grim old temple of Guadma ;—a kitten was playing with a feather there.

In his enumeration of the chief points of attraction in the more striking books of voyages and travels, Leigh Hunt, with his happy appreciation of whatever is most quaint in description, most sympathetic in impression, has helped us to an arrangement, which, with a convenient modification of our own, we shall follow congenially. We shall seek for remoteness and obscurity of place,-marvellousness of hearsay,- surprising, but conceivable truth,- barbaric magnificence, the grotesque and the fantastic,-strangeness of custom,-personal danger, courage, and suffering, and their barbaric consolations. In the pursuit of these, our path should wind, had we time to take the longest, among deserts and lands of darkness, -phoenixes and griffins and sphinxes,

human monsters, and more monstrous gods, the courts of Akbhar and Aurengzebe,-palaces of the Mogul and the Kathayan Khan, pigmies, monkey-gods, mummies, Fakeers, dancing-girls, tattooed warriors, Thugs, cannibals, Fetishes, human sacrifices, and the Evil Eye,-Chinese politeness, Bedouin honor, Bechuana simplicity, the plague, the amok, the bearding of lions, the graves of herotravellers, flowers in the desert, and the universal tenderness of women.

And as our wild way leads us onward, it shall open up visions, new and wondrous, or beautiful as new, to those who try it for the first time. See now, at the outset, stepping into the footprints of old Sir John Mandeville, what do we behold?" In that kingdom of Abeay is a great marvel; for a province of the country, that hath in circuit three days' journeys, that men call Hanyson, is all covered with darkness, without any brightness or light, so that no man may see nor hear, nor no man dare enter into it. And nevertheless, they of that country say that sometimes men hear voices of folks, and horses neighing, and cocks crowing; and

they know well that men live there, but they know not what men. And they say that the darkness befell by miracle of God; for an accursed emperor of Persia, that was named Saures, pursued all Christian men for to destroy them, and to compel them to make sacrifice to his idols; and rode with a great host, all that ever he could, for to confound the Christian men. And then in that country dwelled many good Christian men, the which left their goods, and would have fled into Greece; and when they were in a plain called Megon, anon this cursed emperor met with them, with his host, for to have slain them and hewn them in pieces. And anon the Christian men did kneel to the ground, and make their prayers to God to succor them. Then a great thick cloud came and covered the emperor and all his host; and so they remain in that manner, that no more may they get out on any side; and so shall they evermore abide in darkness, till the day of doom, by the miracle of God. And then the Christian men went whither they liked best, at their own pleasure, without hindrance of any creature, and their enemies were inclosed and confounded in darkness without a blow. And that was a great miracle that God made for them; wherefore methinks that Christian men should be more devout to serve our Lord God than any other men of any other belief."

Thus doth the simple, willing faith of the childlike traveller of 1350 draw from his strange old story a moral which may serve to light the way for you and me when we wend through the soul's land of darkness.

dises, more commonly than in any other part.

In Cathay is the great city of Xanadu; and in this city is the seat of the great Khan, in a full great palace, and the most passing fair in all the world, of the which the walls be in circuit more than two miles; and within the walls it is all full of other palaces. And in the garden of the great palace there is a great hill, upon the which there is another palace; and it is the most fair and the most rich that any man may devise. And there is the great garden, full of wild beasts; so that when the great Khan would have any sport, to take any of the wild beasts, or of the fowls, he will cause them to be chased, and take them at his windows, without going out of his chamber. The palace where the seat is is both great and passing fair; and within the palace, in the hall, there be twentyfour pillars of fine gold; and all the walls are covered within with red skins of beasts, that men call panthers, that be fair beasts, and well smelling; so that for the sweet odor of the skins no evil air may enter into the palace. And in the midst of this palace is the mountour (high seat) for the great Khan, that is all wrought of gold and of precious stones and great pearls; and at the four corners of the mountour be four serpents of gold, and all about there is made large nets of silk and gold and great pearls hanging all about the mountour. And the hall of the palace is full nobly arrayed, and full marvellously attired on all parts, in all things that men apparel any hall with. And at the chief end of the hall is the emperor's throne, full high, where he sitteth at his meat; and that is of fine precious stones, bound all about with purified gold and precious stones and great pearls; and the steps that he goeth up to the table be of precious stones mixed with gold. Under the firmament is not so great a lord, nor so mighty, nor so rich, as the great Khan. Neither Prester John, that is emperor of the high India, nor the Sultan of Babylonia, nor the Emperor of Persia. All these be not in comparison

to the great Khan, neither of might, nor of nobleness, nor of royalty, nor of riches; for in all these he passeth all earthly princes. Wherefore it is great harm that he believeth not faithfully in God."

And here we naturally recall that wondrous vision which Coleridge conjured up, when, opium-rapt, he dreamed in his study-chair of Kubla's enchanted ground.

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girded round;
And here were gardens bright with sinuous
rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

"Five miles, meandering with a mazy motion, Through wood and dale the sacred river

ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to

man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

"A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw;

It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long

I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! beware
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your lips with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise!"

The account which Herodotus gives of the gifts that Croesus sent to the Oracle at Delphi is a splendid example of barbaric magnificence. First, the King offered up three thousand of every kind of sacrificial