fools.' Learned men, who are not necessarily wise men, occasionally do they also occasionally follow rogues; and there is consequently little cause for wonder when a combination of folly and roguery, like Spiritualism, counts distinguished proselytes by the score. It is the eternal ineradicable liability to such delusions that renders the human mind essentially the same in all ages; we fear we must say nearly the same of the heart. What reliance can be placed on education for thoroughly purifying or perfecting either, when we so frequently see the most highly educated men setting the worst example to the rest? Knowledge may prove a panacea for the social errors or abuses which proceed from ignorance, and their name is legion; but, assuming its universal diffusion, it will hardly endow the people at large with the qualities which have been found wanting in the wisest, brightest: in a Bacon, a Brougham, a Voltaire, a Pope. It will not render them proof against vanity, cupidity, or caprice; it will not confer honour or integrity. They will not perforce become provident and self-sacrificing; habitually foregoing immediate personal gratification for general and lasting good. Knowledge will clear the surface without penetrating to the core. As for legislation

'How small of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.'

Or, to adopt Mr. Gladstone's words in his Greenwich speech: The social problems which confront us, are many and formidable. Let the Government labour to its uttermost, let the Legislature spend days and nights in your service; but after the very best has been achieved, the question whether the English father is to be the father of a happy family, and the centre of a united home, is a question which must depend mainly upon himself.' The grand hour of trial for society will be when all bad laws shall have been abolished, when all material obstructions to progress shall have been removed, when the baffled demagogue, vainly looking round for a public grievance, shall be brought face to face with the invaluable adage: Let every man's reform, like his charity, begin at home, and society, like Thames water, will purify itself.' Public or political virtue reposes on a different foundation from private or domestic virtue: the one must grow spontaneously, the other may be promoted or enforced; and the problem started by Sir Henry Holland's retrospect, the problem to be solved by the England of the future, is neither more nor less than whether the highest civilisation can overcome the vices and weaknesses which we have been taught to believe inherent in mankind.

Vol. 132.-No. 263.

ART.

ART. IX.-1. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East. By Colonel Henry Yule, C.B. London, 1871.

2. Visits to High Tartary, Yarkand, and Kashgar (formerly Chinese Tartary), and Return Journey over the Karakoram Pass. By Robert Shaw. London, 1871.

3. Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce in Pigtail and Petticoats, or an Overland Journey from China towards India. Cooper. London, 1871.

4. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society.

By T. T.

F we except that everlasting puzzle, the Sources of the Nile,

the attention of geographers at the present day than the countries traversed by Marco Polo. Geography aims at preparing a table for many appetites, and the problems involved in the exploration of Central Asia and China abound in interest for the antiquary, the man of science, the merchant, and the politician.

Although great advances have been made within the last half century in our knowledge of these countries, and especially in those parts of the great mountain back-bone of the Old World which lie to the north-west of India, and, indeed, in Turkistan both Eastern and Western, we have yet much to learn. But the progress is rapid, and if the next few years should show examples of such pluck and perseverance as have lately been exhibited by men like Cayley, Forsyth, Hayward, Shaw, Cooper, and Captain Montgomerie's emissaries, in Eastern-and by Severtsoff, Semenoff, Struve, Poltoratski, Baron Osten-Sacken, and other Russian explorers, in Western Turkistan, not only may we hope soon to see the true physical features of this vast region laid open before the world of science, but these geographical operations will, it cannot be doubted, prove the forerunners to the establishment of extensive commercial intercourse and, let us hope, at the same time, the surest pledges of peace between the two great nations principally concerned therein. It is, however, with Eastern Turkistan that we have now to deal,-a region which, down to 1864, the Chinese had held in subjection for about a hundred years, their latest conquests of the country dating from about the middle of last century. But this was by no means the first time that these regions had formed a part of the empire. Even as far back as the first century of our era the Chinese power extended across the Bolor to the shores of the Caspian. The following ages saw great fluctuations, but the conquests of Chinghiz

and

and his successors again brought the states of Turkistan under the same supremacy with China. When they fell, the native Chinese dynasty which succeeded them held little beyond the borders of China Proper, and it was not till the present Manchu dynasty was in the height of its power, that Eastern Turkistan became, for the last time, united to China.

But let us stop to consider the real position which Marco Polo rightfully holds in the history of Oriental discovery; for while all the world recognises him as the Prince of mediaval travellers, who, by the extent and influence of his discoveries, has contributed more than any other to the progress of geography and of our knowledge of the East, it must not be supposed that from him was derived the earliest information respecting either Central Asia or China. We need not stop to discuss the muchdisputed question of the position of the Thinæ of Eratosthenes, Strabo, and the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, or of the application of Marinus's Serica, as preserved to us by Ptolemy, to the kingdom of China. It is tolerably clear, we think, that China is the country referred to, and that the Seres of Ammianus Marcellinus, corresponding as they closely do in character with the modern Chinese, were intended to represent that people. That the Romans possessed some knowledge of China, would seem to be shown by a discovery made by De Guignes of a statement in a Chinese historical work that, in A.D. 166, an embassy, said to have come by sea, arrived from An-Thon (Antoninus) to the Emperor Yan-hi; and the use of the 'Serica vestis,' alluded to by Horace and Propertius, would appear to confirm the impression, provided only that silk, and not muslin, were the commodity really alluded to. A more unquestionable record is a narrative in Arabic, written about the year 1173, describing the observations of two Arab merchants who were in China respectively in 851 and 867. This curious document was discovered in the Comte de Seignelay's library by M. Eusèbe Renaudot, and translated and published by him in Paris in 1718. Mixed up with some exaggerations were many curious particulars, so accurate as to prove the genuineness of the story and the intelligence of the narrators. Tea, under the name of tcha, was distinctly referred to as being universally drunk, infused in hot water, and supposed to be a cure for every disease. Porcelain, silk, and rice, the peculiar dresses, both of the men and of the women, and the skill of the people in mechanics, were all described as accurately as we now know them.

When the devastations carried by the Mongols into Russia, Georgia, and Armenia, became more and more alarming in o 2

Europe,

Europe, Pope Innocent IV., at the Council of Lyons, determined to send ambassadors to pacify these formidable enemies, so as to divert these disastrous results from the West; or, at all events, to collect every possible information respecting a people so little known. Accordingly, in 1245, the Minorite friar Giovanni de Plano Carpini, together with five other brothers of the Order, were chosen to undertake this task. Carpini was absent sixteen months. He had the merit of being the first to publish in Europe a rational description of the Mongol nation, and he was also the first European to bring back some account of China from hearsay, or to make mention of the celebrated Prester John. The next European to bring information respecting these countries was William van Ruysbroeck, or De Rubruquis, also a Minorite friar. A rumour had spread through Europe that the Grand Khan had embraced the Christian religion, and St. Louis, being then engaged in the fourth crusade against the Saracens, was anxious to cement an alliance with the Tartars, who were at that time in hostility with the same power on the side of Persia. Accordingly, Ruysbroeck was sent out, accompanied by the friar Bartholomew of Cremona. It was in 1253, at which time Marco Polo was but in his cradle, that they left Acre on their eastward journey, and finally reached Karakoram, the residence of the Great Khan. Ruysbroeck was the first to make known in Europe that favourite Mongolian drink, the Koumis, produced by the fermentation of mare's milk. He first spoke of the rice-spirit, arrack, and gave an accurate description of the yak. He was also the first European after Ammianus Marcellinus to mention rhubarb as a remedy. In those days it was supposed that the Caspian was connected with the Northern Ocean. It was Ruysbroeck who showed that it was only a lake, the enormous extent of which caused it to be called a sea. remarks on the Nestorian Christians are full of interest. says that they inhabited fifteen towns of Cathay, and that their bishop lived at Singan, a town in Western China, where a monument was found in 1625, bearing witness to the ancient -existence of a Christian establishment.

His

He

At the period when the travels of the Polo family commence, the Tartars were becoming objects rather of hope than of fear, as possible helps against the Mahommedans. So that now Asia lay quite open to the passage of travellers from the West. With the exception of India and the coasts of the Mediterranean, the whole of Asia may be said to have been divided into four great monarchies, under the descendants of the four sons of Chinghiz. Kublai, Chinghiz's grandson, had just ascended the chief thione of the Mongol empire in 1259, and transferred the seat of govern

ment

ment from Karakoram, on the northern verge of the Mongolian Desert, to Khanbalig, now Pekin, a step which resulted in the conversion of the Mongol Khan into a Chinese emperor.

At this time the merchants of Genoa, Lombardy, and Venice made their own purchases of silk and velvet in the markets of Kinsay, Zayton, and Khanbalig, now known as Hangchow, Chincheu, and Pekin. In 1254, Nicolas and Maffeo Polo, the father and uncle of Marco Polo, members of a Venetian family which had establishments at Constantinople and the Crimea, made a trading journey to Tartary, Nicolas leaving a wife behind him in Venice, which city they quitted about 1254. It was not, however, till about 1260 that they started from Constantinople eastward. They crossed the Euxine to Roumania, made their way to Bokhara, and after an abode there of three years, attached themselves to the company of an ambassador going to the Court of Kublai Khan. This monarch received them graciously, and was curious in his inquiries concerning the affairs of Europe and the Christian religion. Learning that the Pope was the person regarded with the greatest veneration in Europe, he resolved on despatching them as his ambassadors to his Holiness, with a letter begging him to send out a hundred persons able to prove that the law of Christ was best. The Khan charged them to bring him some of the oil of the lamp which burns on the sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem, and he gave them a tablet of gold which would ensure them supplies wherever they went. They arrived at Acre in 1269, and found that no Pope existed, for Clement IV. was dead the year before, and no new election had yet taken place. So they returned to Venice, where Nicolas found that his wife had been long dead, but had left a son behind her, now fifteen years of age, the Marco Polo whom two years afterwards the travellers took back with them to the East, and with whose story we have now to deal.

To the importance of that story literature has paid its spontaneous testimony. Fifty-seven editions have not sufficed to satisfy the curiosity of the public, and five centuries and a half elapsed without producing a traveller to dispute with the noble Venetian the glory of being the greatest explorer of the continent of Asia. But for this very reason the value of this noble work was necessarily bereft of its true appreciation by the learned. For this end the beaten track of researches, based exclusively on Greek and Latin sources, was insufficient. requisite to bring into the field the resources of Oriental literature, and illustrations from Oriental travel. By the aid of these that which was reputed false has become recognised as true; and if we find some chronological errors and misshapen forms of

It was

names,