able consequences. For myself, I am less
solicitous with regard to concessions or privileges, than with regard to
that spirit of friendship and good neighborhood, which embraces alike
the distant and the near, and, when once established, renders all else
easy.

The necessary result of the present experiment in diplomacy will be to
make the countries which it visits better known to the Chinese, and also
to make the Chinese better known to them. Each will know the other
better and will better comprehend that condition of mutual dependence
which is the law of humanity. In the relations among nations, as in
common life, this is of infinite value. Thus far, I fear that the
Chinese are poorly informed with regard to us. I am sure that we are
poorly informed with regard to them. We know them through the porcelain
on our tables with its lawless perspective, and the tea-chest with its
unintelligible hieroglyphics. There are two pictures of them in the
literature of our language, which cannot fail to leave an impression.
The first is in "Paradise Lost," where Milton, always learned even in
his poetry, represents Satan as descending in his flight,

... on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where _Chineses_ drive,
With sails and wind their cany wagons light.

The other is that admirable address on the study of the law of nature
and nations, where Sir James Mackintosh, in words of singular felicity,
alludes to "the tame but ancient and immovable civilization of China."
It will be for us now to enlarge these pictures and to fill the canvas
with life.

I do not know if it has occurred to our honored guest, that he is not
the first stranger who, after sojourning in this distant unknown land,
has come back loaded with its honors, and with messages to the
Christian powers. He is not without a predecessor in his mission. There
is another career as marvellous as his own. I refer to the Venetian,
Marco Polo, whose reports, once discredited as the fables of a
traveller, are now recognized among the sources of history, and
especially of geographical knowledge. Nobody can read them without
feeling their verity. It was in the latter part of the far-away
thirteenth century, that this enterprising Venetian, in company with his
father and uncle, all of them merchants, journeyed from Venice, by the
way of Constantinople, Trebizond, on the Black Sea, and Central Asia,
until they reached first the land of Prester John, and then th