The French, not long ago, praised one of their neighbours so highly, that the latter is suspected to have lost as much modesty as the former gained by it. But they did this as a set-off against their own despots and bigots. When they again became the greatest power in Europe, they had a relapse of their old egotism. The French, though an amiable and intelligent people, are not an imaginative one. The greatest height they go is in a balloon. They get no farther than France, let them go where they will. They "run the great circle and are still at home," like the squirrel in his rolling cage. Instead of going to Nature in their poetry, they would make her come to them, and dress herself at their last new toilet. In practical philosophy and metaphysics, they divest themselves of gross prejudices, and then think they are in as graceful a state of nakedness as Adam and Eve.

At the time when the French had this fit upon them of praising the English (which was nevertheless the honester one of the two), they took to praising the Chinese for numberless unknown qualities. This seems a contradiction to the near-sightedness we speak of: but the reason they praised them was, that the Chinese had the merit of unbounded religious toleration; a great and extraordinary one, certainly, and not the less so for having been, to all appearance, the work of one man. All the romance of China, such as it was,—anything in which they differed from the French, their dress, their porcelain towers, their Great Wall,-was nothing. It was the particular agreement with the philosophers.

It happened, curiously enough, that they could not have selected for their panegyric a nation apparently more contemptuous of others; or at least more self-satisfied and unimaginative. The Chinese are cunning and ingenious, and have a great talent at bowing out ambassadors who come to visit them. But it is somewhat inconsistent with what appears to be their general character that they should pay strangers even this equivocal compliment; for, under a prodigious mask of polite

ness, they are not slow to evince their contempt of other nations whenever any comparison is insinuated with the subjects of the Brother of the Sun and Moon. The knowledge they respect in us most is that of gun-making, and of the East Indian passage. When our countrymen showed them a map of the earth, they inquired for China; and, on finding that it only made a little piece in a corner, could not contain their derision. They thought that it was the main territory in the middle, the apple of the world's eye.

On the other hand, the most imaginative nations, in their highest times, have had a respect for remote countries. It is a mistake to suppose that the ancient term "barbarian," applied to foreigners, suggested the meaning we are apt to give it. It may have gathered some such insolence with it among the Romans, as they spread their own barbarous power; but the more intellectual Greeks venerated the countries from which they brought the elements of their mythology and philosophy. The philosopher travelled into Egypt, like a son to see his father. The merchant heard in Phoenicia the far-brought stories of other realms, which he told to his delighted countrymen. It is supposed that the mortal part of Mentor, in the "Odyssey," was drawn from one of these voyagers. When Anacharsis, the Scythian, was reproached with his native place by an unworthy Greek, he said, "My country may be a shame to me, but you are a shame to your country." Greece had a lofty notion of the Persians and the Great King, till Xerxes came over to teach it better, and betrayed the softness of their skulls.

It was the same with the Arabians, at the time when they had the chief accomplishments of the world to themselves; as we see by their delightful tales. Everything shines with them. in the distance, like a sunset. What an amiable people are their Persians! What a wonderful place is the island of Serendib! You would think nothing could be finer than the Caliph's city of Bagdad, till you hear of Grand Cairo; and how has that epithet and that name towered in the imagination of

all those who have not had the misfortune to see the modern city! Sindbad was respected, like Ulysses, because he had seen so many adventures and nations. So was Aboulfaouris, the great voyager in the "Persian Tales." His very name

sounds like a wonder.

"With many a tempest had his beard been shaken."

It was one of the workings of the great Alfred's mind, to know about far distant countries. There is a translation by him of a book of geography; and he even employed people to travel,— a great stretch of intellectual munificence for those times. About the same period, Haroun al Raschid (whom our manhood is startled to find almost a less real person than we thought him, for his very reality) wrote a letter to the Emperor of the West, Charlemagne. Here is Arabian and Italian romance shaking hands in person!

The Crusades pierced into a new world of remoteness. We do not know whether those were much benefited who took part in them; but for the imaginative persons remaining at home, the idea of going to Palestine must have been like travelling into a supernatural world. When the campaign itself had a good effect, it must have been of a very fine and highly-tempered description. Chaucer's Knight had been

"Sometime with the lord of Palatie

Agen another hethen in Turkie:

And evermore he had a sovereign price;

And though that he was worthy, he was wise,
And of his port as meek as is a mayde."

How like a return from the moon must have been the reappearance of such travellers as Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo, and William de Rubruquis, with their news of Prester John, the Great Mogul, and the Great Cham of Tartary! The longlost voyager must have been like a person consecrated in all the quarters of heaven. His staff and his beard must have looked like relics of his former self. The Venetians, who were some of the earliest European travellers, have been remarked, among

their other amiable qualities, for their great respect to strangers. The peculiarity of their position, and the absence of so many things which are commonplaces to other countries, such as streets, horses, and coaches, add, no doubt, to this feeling. But a foolish or vain people would only feel a contempt for what they did not possess. Milton, in one of those favourite passages of his, in which he turns a mere vocabulary into such grand meaning and music, shows us whose old footing he had delighted to follow. How he enjoys the distance; emphatically using the words, far, farthest, and utmost !

"Embassies from regions far remote,

In various habits, on the Appian road,

Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,
Meroe, Nilotick isle; and more to west,

The realm of Bocchus to the Black-moor sea;
From the Asian kings, and Parthian among these;
From India and the golden Chersonese,

And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane."

Parad. Reg. Book IV.

One of the main helps to our love of remoteness in general, is the associations we connect with it of peace and quietness. Whatever there may be at a distance, people feel as if they should escape from the worry of their local cares. "Oh that I had wings like a dove! then would I fly away, and be at rest.” The word far is often used wilfully in poetry, to render distance still more distant. An old English song begins

"In Irelande, farre over the sea,

There dwelt a bonny king."

Thomson, a Scotchman, speaking of the western isles of his own country, has that delicious line, full of a dreary yet lulling pleasure:

"As when a shepherd of the Hebrid isles,

Placed far amid the melancholy main."

In childhood, the total ignorance of the world, especially when we are brought up in some confined spot, renders everything

beyond the bounds of our dwelling a distance and a romance. Mr Lamb, in his "Recollections of Christ's Hospital," says that he remembers when some half-dozen of his schoolfellows set off, "without map, card, or compass, on a serious expedition to find out Philip Quarll's Island." We once encountered a set of boys as romantic. It was at no greater distance than at the foot of a hill near Hampstead; yet the spot was so perfectly Cisalpine to them, that two of them came up to us with looks of hushing eagerness, and asked, "whether, on the other side of that hill, there were not robbers;" to which the minor adventurer of the two added, “And some say, serpents." They had all got bows and arrows, and were evidently hovering about the place, betwixt daring and apprehension, as on the borders of some wild region. We smiled to think which it was that husbanded their suburb wonders to more advantage, they or we; for while they peopled the place with robbers and serpents, we were peopling it with sylvans and fairies.

"So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man ;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The child is father to the man ;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety."