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 gathered some such insolence with it in the course of time; 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 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 Bagdat, 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 Aboul faouris 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.

We

The Crusades pierced into a new world of remoteness. do not know whether those were much benefited, who took part in them; but for the imaginative person 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 à 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 re-appearance of such travellers as Sir John Mandevile, Marco Polo, and William de Rubruquis, with their news of Prester John, the Great Mogul, and the Great Cham of Tartary! The long-lost 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 for strangers. The peculiarity of their position, and the absence of so many things which are common-places 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 favorite passages of his, in which he turns a nomenclature 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., b. iv.

One of our 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. "O 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 school-fellows 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."

CHAPTER XIX.

A Tale for a Chimney Corner.

A MAN who does not contribute his quota of grim story now-a. days, seems hardly to be free of the republic of letters. He is bound to wear a death's head, as part of his insignia. If he does not frighten everybody, he is nobody. If he does not shock the ladies, what can be expected of him?

We confess we think very cheaply of these stories in general. A story, merely horrible or even awful, which contains no sentiment elevating to the human heart and its hopes, is a mere appeal to the least judicious, least healthy, and least masculine of our passions, fear. They whose attention can be gravely arrested by it, are in a fit state to receive any absurdity with respect; and this is the reason, why less talents are required to enforce it, than in any other species of composition. With this opinion of such things, we may be allowed to say, that we would. undertake to write a dozen horrible stories in a day, all of which should make the common worshippers of power, who were not in the very healthiest condition, turn pale. We would tell of Haunting Old Women, and Knocking Ghosts, and Solitary Lean Hands, and Empusas on one Leg, and Ladies growing Longer and Longer, and Horrid Eyes meeting us through Key-holes, and Plaintive Heads, and Shrieking Statues, and Shocking Anomalies of Shape, and Things which when seen drove peop.e mad; and Indigestion knows what besides. But who would measure talents with a leg of veal, or a German sausage?

Mere grimness is as easy as grinning; but it requires something to put a hardsome face on a story. Narratives become of suspicious merit in proportion as they lean to Newgate-like offences, particularly of blood and wounds. A child has a reasonable respect for a Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, because all