Because the De Sautys are scientifically virtuous, shall there be no more barbaric cakes and ale for us? Because they are joined to their improved Shanghaes, must we let our phoenixes alone? Must we deny our crocodiles when they preach to us codfish? And shall we abstain from crying, "In the name of the Prophet, figs!" in order that they may bawl, "In the name of Brother Jonathan, doughnuts"?
Yes, the world is visibly shrinking in the hard grip of commerce, and the magic and the marvels that filled our childish souls with adventurous longing are fading away in the change. Let us make haste, then, before it is too late,--before the very Sphinx is guessed, and the Boodh himself baptized in Croton water; and, like the Dutchmen in Hans Christian Andersen's story, who put on the galoches of happiness and stepped out into the Middle Ages, let us slip our feet into the sandals of imagination and step out into the desert or the jungle.
One who expressed his Oriental experiences in an epic of fresh and thrilling sensations has written,--"If a man be not born of his mother with a natural Chifney bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for loathing the wearisome ways of society,--a time for not liking tamed people,--a time for not dancing quadrilles,--a time for pretending that Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people are greater in death than the first living lord of the treasury,--a time, in short, for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the opera, and all our most cherished institutions. A little while you are free and unlabelled, like the ground you compass; but civilization is coming, and coming; you and your much-loved waste-lands will be surely inclosed, and sooner or later you will be brought down to a state of utter usefulness,--the ground will be curiously sliced into acres and roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly on your saddle, you will be caught, you will be taken up from travel, as a colt from grass, to be trained, and matched, and run.
"All this in time: but first come Continental tours, and the moody longing for Eastern travel; your native downs and moors can hold you no longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches of free-land,--you thread your way through the crowds of Europe, and at last, on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon the very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities.