DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11448#0024
XII
PREFACE.
of European life, with the silence and repose of the East,
resembles that which we experience in passing from the
gay and turbulent thoroughfares of Naples to the desolate
beauty of Pompeii. The transition strikes forcibly on the
imagination, and invests Oriental travel with a peculiar
charm.
Nor is it only antiquity, piety, or scholastic xore that
lends to the East so powerful an interest: the variety that
strikes upon the senses—the delicious climate, scarcely ob-
tained in our conservatories—the wild animals, only known
to our menageries, and the wayside flowers, that rival our
most choice exotics—all these are pleasant incidents in the
pastoral mode of life. In the cities there is that appear-
ance of something secret and suppressed, which stimulates
curiosity and adventure—there is the mystery that enve-
lopes woman—the romance of every-day life—the masque-
rading-looking population—politics and manners of the
time of Moses, Saracen society, cloudless days, and Ara-
bian nights.
By such experiences, the traveller will probably find his
perceptions excited, and his faculties developed ; while his
sympathies are expanded, and awakened
" To all that is enjoyed where'er he goes,
And all that is endured."
The best of all this is, that he becomes, perhaps, more
catholic-hearted ; and the worst is, that perhaps he turns
author, and finds a difficulty in accounting to his readers
for assuming such a character: for we seem to have writ-
ers on the East sufficient in number, and of all descrip-
tions ; from the high-born lady to the hardy Burkhardt—
from the massive prose of Robinson, to the genial poetry
PREFACE.
of European life, with the silence and repose of the East,
resembles that which we experience in passing from the
gay and turbulent thoroughfares of Naples to the desolate
beauty of Pompeii. The transition strikes forcibly on the
imagination, and invests Oriental travel with a peculiar
charm.
Nor is it only antiquity, piety, or scholastic xore that
lends to the East so powerful an interest: the variety that
strikes upon the senses—the delicious climate, scarcely ob-
tained in our conservatories—the wild animals, only known
to our menageries, and the wayside flowers, that rival our
most choice exotics—all these are pleasant incidents in the
pastoral mode of life. In the cities there is that appear-
ance of something secret and suppressed, which stimulates
curiosity and adventure—there is the mystery that enve-
lopes woman—the romance of every-day life—the masque-
rading-looking population—politics and manners of the
time of Moses, Saracen society, cloudless days, and Ara-
bian nights.
By such experiences, the traveller will probably find his
perceptions excited, and his faculties developed ; while his
sympathies are expanded, and awakened
" To all that is enjoyed where'er he goes,
And all that is endured."
The best of all this is, that he becomes, perhaps, more
catholic-hearted ; and the worst is, that perhaps he turns
author, and finds a difficulty in accounting to his readers
for assuming such a character: for we seem to have writ-
ers on the East sufficient in number, and of all descrip-
tions ; from the high-born lady to the hardy Burkhardt—
from the massive prose of Robinson, to the genial poetry