thou wilt at least procure by traveling. Thou wilt have pleasure and
profit; thou wilt enlarge thy prospects, cultivate thyself, and acquire
friends. It is better to be dead, than, like an insect, to remain always
chained to the same spot of earth.' In the Middle Ages, and especially
among the members of the enlightened Saracenic race, the instinct of
travel was mainly an instinctive desire for education. There was no
other school of knowledge so complete and practical, in the dearth of
books and the absence of other than commercial intercourse between the
ends of the earth, I fancy that this instinct, skipping over some
centuries, reappeared, in my case, in its original form; for it was not
until after I had seen a large portion of the earth, that I became
acquainted with the narratives of my predecessors, and recognized my
kinship with them. With the ghost of the mercantile Marco Polo, or those
of the sharp fellows, Bernier and Tavernier, I do not anticipate much
satisfaction, in the next world; but--if they are not too far off--I
shall shake hands at once with the old monk Rubruquis, and the Knight
Arnold von der Harff, and the far traveled son of the Atlas, Ibn Batuta.

These old narratives have a charm for me, which I do not find in the
works of modern tourists. There is an honest homeliness and unreserve
about them, which I would not exchange for any graces of style. The
writers need no apologetic or explanatory preface; they sit down with
the pressure of a solemn duty upon them. When much of the world was but
dimly known, the man who had reached India, China, or the Islands of the
Sea, and returned to describe his adventures, made his narrative a
matter of conscience, and justly considered that he had added something
to the stock of human knowledge. The world of fable had not then
contracted into as narrow limits as at present; foreign countries were
full of marvels, and science had not made clear the phenomena of nature.
The old travelers had all the wonder and the credulity of children. All