which are performed by a very important section of general literature, we mean works of fiction, to aid in strengthening the bonds of communion between severed portions of the human race. In default of authentic public records, or where the facts they supply are trivial, we are thankful for those anticipations of history, or substitutes for it, with which poets and novelists have invested countries and peoples whose chronicles are too prosaic to excite our imaginations, or whose mighty deeds (achieved in the wilderness) have remained unsung or altogether unregistered. The Anglo-Saxon colonies of North-America have had their two centuries of history, at least; and for those born beneath the stars and stripes,' or on the other side of the Niagara, this period is not without its romance; though it is difficult for us of the Old Country to realise any part of its annals in this aspect. Certainly, for us and for Europe at large, North America has gained more of romantic and thrilling,-nay, of warm human interest, from the vigorous imaginative creations of her lately deceased novelist, (perhaps from that one tale of his, The Last of the Mohicans,') Moore's Canadian Boat Song,' and Campbell's 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' than from all her famous exploits in extending the bounds of civilization, or asserting rational liberty. There are districts of the Old Hemisphere itself, spots contiguous to its eldest and most renowned settlements, which are known only through poetry and fiction. One instance is strikingly to the point. The country between the Black Sea and the Caspian has had its due place in our European atlases for nearly two thousand five hundred years, from the quaint maps of Aristagoras or of Anaximander down to the latest results of French or English topographical criticism, and the researches of Doctor Moritz Wagner. But except the name which that region has given to the division of the human race of which we are proud to form a part, (a name, however, which promises, we believe, to make way sooner or later for some more definite and reasonable appellation,) the Caucasus with its adjacent districts is a comparative blank in sober history. It is now, what it was before Greece had a civilized existence, the locale of the sublimest and most deeply coloured fictions which classical literature can boast; of the Mystery' of Prometheus, in which, as in Goethe's 'Faust,' we shall always find new meanings, and ever return to search again; of the legend of Jason, the heroic prototype of gallant adventurers, and of Medea with her loves and potent witcheries and fierce jealousies,-uniting the august majesty of Greece with the rich, dark fancy of Oriental invention. Yet these confer a wealth of poetical associations to which the ampler chronicles of many countries renowned in history can never aspire. They have

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peopled its remote steppes, (the xovòs τnλougòv tédov of the Prometheus Vinctus,) inhospitable Caucasus,' with the oldest and the noblest creations the realm of fancy can boast; and have given it a place, second, at least, to the most attractive cynosures of historical enthusiasm.

We confess to a weakness in favour of the interest derived to certain localities in our own and other countries, from the associations of fiction, and we should allege in defence of our heresy, that the real never did or could come up to the ideal, in any case of strong poetical interest; that the former is liable to the merciless questionings of criticism,-seldom escaping altogether unscathed; and that for those who have suffered from the unpleasant iconoclasm with which our times are rife, to trust their love again in so frail a bark as that of poetic reality, would be a grave and inexcusable imprudence. It is not the mere bodily presence of martyrs or heroes, but sublimity of suffering or of action, which, by being identified with certain localities, have given them historical consecration. Thoughts of beauty or of grandeur can select the sphere of their peculiar influence, and, powerful as the wand of olden wizards, can hallow from afar. Spots where the imagination of Shakespeare or Schiller, in its highest moods, has rested, are almost more sacred than the dwelling-place of their ordinary life. This may have had a mere accidental connexion with their genius, but those were, for the time, at least, the freely chosen abodes of their spirits; and they have become centres of mental attraction to the tens of thousands who, in various parts of the globe, have rejoiced in the intellectual creations with which they are indissolubly linked. We are not ashamed to say that the platform of Elsinore and the Heath by Fores would have as much interest for us as many a scene of 'real' romance; while in reference to them there is no fear of disenchantment. No querulous Niebuhr, or Grote, or Müller, will seriously put Banquo's question

... What are these,

So withered and so wild in their attire;

That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,

And yet are on 't . . . I'the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

Which outwardly ye seem?'

And no critical truncheon will be lifted successfully against the frowning majesty of buried Denmark :'

For it is, as the air, invulnerable,

And their vain blows malicious mockery.'

But science, history, poetry, and imaginative literature at large, however august or graceful may be the links by which they unite

us to the rest of the world, would seem to sink into insignificance when compared with those innumerable minor threads of connexion which are furnished in the light topographical sketches and jottings of personal adventure, of which the works cited at the head of this paper are a slight sample. The very important purpose to which this exceedingly voluminous section of modern authorship contributes, in heightening the interest we feel in foreign lands and peoples, will seem to most persons to be far more effectually subserved by its means than by the abstractions of reason or fancy to which we have referred. And it is in their moral result, in the charities which they deepen and extend, rather than in their efficiency as supplying substantial knowledge, that a justification must be found for the expenditure of time which it takes to read the works in question, and the proportionate expenditure of time and labour which it must have taken to write them. As establishing a more full and frequent intercourse with other climes, they are most valuable. It is true, the views which they record are often superficial. In many words there are divers vanities,' and in such voluminous publication there will be no lack of trash. The seven sages of Greece gained their world-famous diplomas (in no small degree) by travelling; for in their days travelling itself was far from a vulgar achievement; but in our times, to travel, and to write a book on travel, is an 'event' which happens indiscriminately to the wise and to the unwise. The Bennetts Abroad,' and The Kickleburys on the Rhine,' frequently favour their friends at home, and the public generally, with jottings of adventure, and remarks thereon, after their manner;' yet even these, though not witty in themselves, may yet be the cause (in various ways) that wit is in others;' inasmuch as they present views of things which never could have occurred to more intelligent tourists, by any chance whatever. The severest judgment cannot deny to the vast deluge of shallow and pleasant reading which has, in this and other ways, inundated the literary world, the praise of performing an office which is quite natural as a preparation for a deeper acquaintance with our race. Trifles are usually the prelude to our intercourse with the gravest and most profound individuals among our neighbours and countrymen. In the case of our most abstract and transcendental unknown correspondent,' we have a certain restless curiosity as to mere form and feature, and those innumerable details of the outside of life, which (truly or falsely) we imagine to have some mysterious connexion with its interior realities. Nay, even our compliance with the grave precept, 'nosce teipsum,' would not be considered by any of us as quite complete, if it did not include some acquaintance, at least, with our own proper

6

ROUTES OF MODERN TOURISTS.

83

visage or natural face; and we question whether even the sternest of the harder sex would not feel considerable sympathy with the eagerness of that young lady, who (as Southey's story runs), having escaped from the rigid seclusion of a cloister,-before all other considerations, whether of mental or bodily refreshment,-sought the satisfaction of contemplating her vera effigies in a lookingglass. Simeon Stylites himself, descending from his highest pillar, would scarcely have been able to resist the temptation, had it been put fairly in his way; and would have been obliged to plead Homo sum, &c.' with the best grace he could assume. We shall therefore not quarrel with, but gratefully receive, the pleasant superficialities by which our acquaintance with distant nations is, in these works, sought to be furthered, hoping to supplement them by that deeper intercourse to which they will smooth the way.

The routes of modern tourists are an indication of one of the most remarkable points of material' progress of which the middle of the nineteenth century can boast. A glance at the titles of the books above referred to, will recal to the mind of our readers the fact, that while steam locomotion has wrought its miracles in travelling at home, it has produced one or two striking diversifications in the direction of voyages and travels abroad. The trip to America is beginning to rank among ordinary summer excursions; and as society becomes more fully and gracefully developed in the settlements of the New World, this tour will be increasingly attractive. Lyell and Johnson, and one or two other more recent travellers, have shown us what wealth of information intelligent, thoroughly refined, and unprejudiced visitors may draw, even from that novitiate in civilization through which society in the United States is passing; and the influx of truly courteous and really cultivated Europeans, resolved to be blind as far as possible to venial offences, while they are stanch in their protest against more serious delinquencies, will go far to render North America as pleasing in its humanities as it is vigorous in its energies, and enchanting in climate and scenery.

But while the route of polite travel is undergoing this extension on the one hand, the same improvements in locomotion have re-opened some of the oldest tracks of scientific research and pleasurable recreation. While new countries are made familiar to us by a constant succession of visitors, the followers of Herodotus and Anacharsis were perhaps at no time more numerous than they have been within the last few years. The Mediterranean, from Calpe to Berytus, and from Marseilles to Alexandria, including all the coasts and islands, is unremittingly ploughed up, first actually by paddle-wheels and prows, and then

figuratively on paper, by the untiring pens of the navigators. The reader of light literature may almost exclaim with the old Roman satirist :

Nota magis nulli domus est sua, quam mihi lucus

Martis, et Æoliis vicinum rupibus antrum

Vulcani'

with all the other loca fabulosa' of the Etruscan and Adriatic seas. He may equally complain of the innumerable pilgrims, who have engaged in a literary crusade to Egypt, Syria, and the Levant. So many have been the published records of travel in this direction, that ordinary and straightforward titles have failed where matter was abundant; and strange, outlandish words, or unheard-of combinations of the vernacular, have been resorted to for the mere sake of distinction. The finding of a new name must, we are sure, in some cases have been no ordinary tax on the invention of the writer. Take, for instance, Eothen,' The Pipe of Repose,' 'Morning-Land.' The first work in our list enjoys a privilege above many others, in a local designation which has not become very familiar to English ears, and which is at once distinctive, pronounceable, and appropriate. Though so much has already been done and written, there seems little prospect of a cessation of efforts in this oriental department of literature. The satiated reader must again take up the words of Juvenal, with a slight adaptation, and a very small latitude :

'Jam pridem Syrus in Tamesin defluxit Orontes,
Et linguam, et mores, et cum tibicine chordas
Obliquas, nec non gentilia tympana secum

Vexit.'

We quote these latter words in italics most advisedly (mutatis mutandis); for has not Mr. Albert Smith brought with him,' to illustrate his travels, two most fearful instruments of Eastern music, none other than the Zoomerah, or Arab pipe (himself being the tibicen'), to whose scrannel hoarseness not even its near Hebrew relative can deafen us? and the Darabooka, or Arabian drum (tympanum), completing the discord-in order to show us what serenading goes on before Shepheard's Hotel, in Grand Cairo?

Much of this superfluity is doubtless chargeable upon the 'Overland Mail.' Genius which was formerly pent up in the cabin of an Indiaman,' or wearied with straining an aching gaze towards the shores, which continued (as far as favourable wind and good seamanship could effect it) to preserve a tantalizing distance from the perspective glass of the passenger, is now excited by the manifold experiences of a land journey through the most noted regions of the globe. Formerly, the passage from