Sketches of Persia

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sketches of Persia, by John Malcolm
SKETCHES OF PERSIA.
By SIR JOHN MALCOLM, AUTHOR OF 'HISTORY OF PERSIA,' 'HISTORY OF INDIA,' ETC., ETC. NEW EDITION. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1861.
LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET, AND CHARING CROSS.
TO JOHN FLEMING, Esq., M.D., F.R.S., &c., LATE PRESIDENT OF THE MEDICAL BOARD OF CALCUTTA, BY HIS MOST SINCERE AND ATTACHED FRIEND, THE AUTHOR.



Once upon a time this island of Great Britain had some spots where men and women and little children dwelt, or were believed to dwell, in innocence, ignorance, and content. Travellers seldom visited them; poets saw them in their dreams, and novelists told stories of them: but these days are now past. Thanks to steam-boats and stagecoaches, there is not a spot to which an ignorant or sage human being can retire, where his eye will not be delighted or offended by a dark column of smoke, or his ear gratified or grated by the rattling wheels of a carriage. It is perhaps a consequence of this invasion of retirement that all are tempted from their homes, and that while one half of the population is on the highways, the other half is on the narrow seas. This love of travel, however, is in the vast majority limited to the neighbouring countries of Europe; but the ardour of curiosity, and an ambitious desire of escaping from the beaten track, has of late years induced not a few scientific and enterprising travellers to overrun the renowned lands of Greece and Egypt, whose inhabitants stare with astonishment at men flying with impatience from town to town, exploring ruins; measuring pyramids; groping in dark caverns; analyzing the various properties of earth, air, and water; carrying off mutilated gods and goddesses; packing up common stones and pebbles, as if they were rubies and diamonds; and even bearing away the carcases of the dead, strangely preferring the withered frame of a female mummy, which has been mouldering for four thousand years in its sepulchre, to the loveliest specimens of living and animated beauty.