manners, as the Christian virtues without charity are nothing worth, unless along with them be acquired the art of pleasing. That the sub

stantial and solid qualities may make a man respected, but will never make him loved; and that finally the art of pleasing, which is so essential both to happiness and to success, is not a gift of nature, but can be certainly mastered by any person who takes the necessary pains.

He shows that benevolence, the desire to promote the happiness of other people, is the foundation of good manners, and that the desire to please is within the power of every one. He points out the natural channels in which the couduct suggested by this desire will properly divide themselves. He supplies practical rules of the utmost value, as that one should remark all that which in another offends and displeases him, and take care not to be guilty of the same ourselves-in fact, to do as we should be done by.

I think he must be exceedingly lazy and careless about self-improvement who can read these Letters without being conscious that he knows more and is better equipped for meeting the world than before, and that no one but a fool could uphold the dictum of Johnson.

Lord Chesterfield was in his eightieth year when he died. His last words were an order to his valet to get a chair for a person who had just entered the roomthe ruling passion strong in death.

The master object of his life was to provoke love. He was successful, and was worshipped by that world. of which he was the idol. He was, probably, the most popular Englishman that ever lived, and he was this, not through any peculiar goodness of heart, but because he took pains. He had the intellect to see,

and the energy to practise, all those arts of popularity-which, indeed, may be arts at first, but which, from habit, become nature.

Morality deals with the more general interests of mankind; peliteness and good manners affect the individual, and come home to his heart in a way which touches him to the core. On this head compare the language of Chesterfield, the worldling, and Shelley, the Poet.

"The constant practice of what the French call les attentions is a most necessary ingredient in the art of pleasing; they flatter the selflove of those to whom they are shown; they engage, they captivate more than things of much greater importance. The duties of social life every man is obliged to discharge; but these attentions are voluntary acts, the free-will offerings of good breeding and good nature-they are received, remembered, and returned as such."

Thus Chesterfield, with his wide experience, his strong sense of what conduced most to happiness in the intercourse of man with man; on the other hand, Shelley, the profound poet and metaphysician, discussing the sources of virtue and of joy, seems to arrive at the same conclusion, viz., the inexpressible importance of that love which is expressed in very trivial and minute things.

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But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of this fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance with any other. Each individual who composes the vast multitude which we have been contemplating has a peculiar frame of mind, which, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions remain uniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues. Thus, whilst his life, as a whole, is like the lives

of other men, in detail it is most unlike, and the more subdivided the actions become, that is, the more they enter into that class which have a vital influence on the happiness of others and his own, so much the more are they distinct from those of other men.

'Those little nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love,'

as well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a word, a look or less-the very refraining from some faint and most evanescent expression of countenance; these flow from a profounder source than the series of our habitual conduct, which it has been already said derives its origin from without. These are the actions, and such as these, which make human life what it is, and are the fountain of all the good and evil with which its entire surface is so widely and impartially overspread; and, though they are called minute, they are called so in compliance with the blindness of those who cannot estimate their importance."

Thus Shelley upon the logic of politeness, very justly described it as "the most important part of

moral science."

Pope says that the name of Chesterfield will be remembered,

"While Roman spirit charms or Attic wit."

We have had much of the latter. One quotation more, in which is revealed the dignity, as we have else

where seen the charm, of the first gentleman of his age-which was also the age of Chatham.

"If you should ever fill a great station at court, take care, above all things, to keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades the other vices that may accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent, and without the least speck; for, as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in

private, corruption is so in public life. I call corruption the taking of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment under any pretence whatsoever. Use what power and credit you may have at court in the service of merit rather than of kindred, and not to get pensions and reversions for yourself and your family; for I call that also what it really is, scandalous pollution, though of late it has been so frequent that it has almost lost its name.

"In business be as able as you can, but never be cunning; cunning is the dark sanctuary of incapacity. Every man can be cunning if he pleases by simulation, dissimulation, and, in short, by lying."

Can it be that men like Walpole and Chartres produce by repulsion men like Chatham and Chesterfield, and that brilliant virtues are more likely to be met with in an age of corruption than in ages when there is a sort of universal and mediocre respectability?

ARTHUR CLIVE.

OUR increased familiarity with the geography and history of the world, and the ease and quickness with which we can communicate with foreign countries, have to a great extent deprived travel of the romance with which it was invested in earlier times. Six hundred years ago, Palestine, and the remoter countries of the East, to which most of the travellers of the period directed their steps, were little better known to Europeans than the interior of Africa is at the present day. A journey to these lands was then an adventure of difficulty and danger; but it was one which amply repaid the bold spirits who accomplished it. There were not only new mountains, and lakes, and rivers to be discovered, but new continents, and empires, and civilizations.

There is no more delightful reading than the works of some of the early travellers. Their narratives have a freshness which later writers have tried in vain to imitate. English literature is especially rich in such books of travel. The very first writer of English prose was the celebrated Sir John Maundeville, whose "Voiyage and Travaile," containing an account of his visit to the Holy Land, has appeared in almost every language, and in every form, from the annotated octavo to the penny chap-book The great collections of Hakluyt and Purchas are accessible to few, but they contain a vast mass of records of early travel, many of which are of absorbing interest.

In point of time, the Arabs take precedence of all the travellers of modern times. In the ninth century, two Arab merchants of Bas

sora went as far as Canton, and wrote an account of their journey, which is still in existence; and Casiri enumerates no fewer than eighteen voyages or itineraries of learned Spanish Arabs who travelled. in search of geographical information. At the head of these we must place Edrisi of Cordova, who constructed the famous silver globe for Roger II., King of Sicily, and who, in the middle of the twelfth century, wrote a work which has been printed under the title of "Geographia Nubiensis," but which he himself more quaintly designated, "The Going Out of a Curious Man to Explore the Regions of the Globe, its Provinces, Islands, Cities, and their Dimensions and Situation."

In the thirteenth century the victorious march of the Tartars towards the West caused the most powerful kingdoms of Europe to tremble, and both the Pope and the King of France sent anibassadors to stay the threatened invasion. In those days Churchmen were generally selected for such diplomatic services, as they were the only persons fitted by education to conduct negotiations, or to reduce them to writing. The ambassadors thus sent to the East were the next travellers who visited that part of the world. In 1215, John of Carpini, a Franciscan, with three associates, set out as the bearer of a letter from the Pope addressed "To the King and People of the Tartars," and proceeded by way of Poland and Russia, the southern portion of which, then called Comania, still bore traces of recent Tartar conquest. After a tedious

and toilsome journey they reached the head-quarters of Cuyné Khan, presented the Pope's letter, and received one in reply, informing the Head of the Church that, if he wished for peace, he must without delay repair in person to Tartary, "there to hear the answer and the will of the Great Khan, the ruler of all men." With this answer Carpini and his companions began their homeward journey in November. They suffered great hardships on the way, being often compelled to sleep on the snow, but at length they succeeded in reaching Kiev, where their wants were supplied, and from which they easily accomplished their return.

Still less successful was the mission headed by Ascelinus, a Dominican friar, who was despatched in 1247 to the head-quarters of the southern army of Tartars in Persia. The Tartars there soon discovered how limited the military power was by which the extravagant religious pretensions of the Pope were supported. They treated the friars with contempt and derision, half starved Ascelinus and his suite, and even threatened to put them to death. When the friars were permitted to depart, they were made the bearers of a despatch to His Holiness very similar in its terms to that sent by Carpini's hands.

Of the embassy from the French king, St. Louis, which set out in 1253, a full account has been preserved. It was headed by a Minorite friar, William de Rubruquis, and was intended originally only to open communications with Sartach, who was in command of the Tartar army on the western frontier, and who had been reported to be inclined to embrace Christianity. But Sartach's interest in the Christian religion was limited to a desire to possess the friar's illuminated missal and psalter, which he detained in spite of all remonstrances.

Rubruquis was sent on to the court of the Great Khan, which was the invariable practice of the Tartar chiefs with all embassies. He took nearly the same route as Carpini had done; but his journey was somewhat longer, for the Khan had, in the meantime, changed his residence farther towards the northeast. The errand of Rubruquis was more religious than political, and from that point of view his visit must be regarded as a failure; but he added very considerably to the stock of information possessed by Europeans about the East.

The fame, however, of all previous travellers in the East is eclipsed by that of Marco Polo. Before his time, the sciences and arts practised by the nations of the East, their natural products, their manufactures, and their commercial resources, were almost unknown. It was to him that the merchants of the day were indebted for information on all these subjects, and he may thus be said to have laid the foundation of that Indo-European trade which in our day has attained such colossal dimensions.

It was about the middle of the thirteenth century that Nicolo and Maffei Polo, two brothers, merchantnobles of Venice, made their first journey to the East. With a shipload of costly goods they sailed to Constantinople, which was then practically a dependency of Venice, having been taken about fifty years previously by the Doge Enrico Dandolo, and placed under the rule of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. Having there disposed of their merchandise, they resolved to continue their journey eastward. They visited several of the ports of the Black Sea, and thereafter passed through Bulgaria into Persia, where they settled down at Bokhara. While they were here, an opportunity occurred of joining an embassy which was on its way to the

Great Khan. They did so, and, after travelling for a year in a northeasterly direction, they reached the residence of that monarch, who showed much interest in European affairs, and at last sent them back as bearers of a message to the Pope, requesting His Holiness "to send him a hundred wise men, learned in all the seven arts, who might show to the idolaters, and others subject to his dominion, the diabolic nature of their law, and how that of the Christians was superior." He gave them his royal signet to serve as a passport, and they forthwith set out on their journey. It occupied three years; and before they could accomplish it Pope Clement IV. was dead, and those disputes had arisen among the cardinals which kept the see vacant for three years. In these circumstances they proceeded to Venice, where Nicolo found that his wife was dead, and that soon after his departure a son had been born to him, and named Marco, who was now a lad of about ten years of age. The Polos remained in Venice for two years, and at the expiry of that time, seeing that no new pontiff had been elected, they despaired of being able to carry out the Khan's instructions, and set out on their return to the East, taking with them young Marco. They had reached Laias (Giazza, in Lesser Armenia), when they were overtaken by a messenger from Theobald of Placentia, the Papal legate at Acre, informing them that he had been raised to the pontificate, under the title of Gregory X., and desiring them immediately to return. They had a very gracious reception from Gregory, who loaded them with honours, and sent with them two friars of great learning as ambassadors to the Khan. After receiving the Papal benediction they resumed their journey, but when they

again reached Laias they found it besieged by the Sultan of Babylonia; and the friars, "struck with the fear of war, and with the dangers already encountered," refused to proceed farther. Nothing daunted, our travellers pressed on alone, and, after encountering many dangers and difficulties, arrived at Clemenfu," a very rich and powerful city," where the Khan was then residing.

Khan Kublai received his envoys with joy and commended them for their fidelity; and after hearing the result of their mission to the Pope, and receiving with reverence a flask of oil which they had taken from the Holy Sepulchre, he inquired who young Marco was. Nicolo informed him; and Marco received a hearty welcome, the Khan being greatly pleased with him. The Polos were detained at court and treated with the highest distinction; and Messer Marco, who employed himself busily in acquiring the principal Eastern languages, soon became an established favourite. He was frequently sent on embassies by the Khan, and his sagacity and penetration generally enabled him to succeed in the missions he undertook. On his return from these, he had always a variety of information to communicate regarding the countries through which he had travelled; "while other ambassadors, being able to say nothing except about the special message entrusted to them, were accounted foolish and ignorant by the Khan, who was greatly delighted to become acquainted with the varieties of nations."

For seventeen years the Polo family remained with the Great Khan. During three of these Marco was supreme governor of one of the provinces of China. His father and uncle had amassed a very large fortune. They now began to think of returning to