For one shilling, any one curious to know something of the sights of this London, can do so by purchasing a good-sized volume—Dickens's London. A look at it will soon satisfy one how true it is that compared to London all other cities are but villages. It will very soon count four millions of people under its sway. Every year one hundred thousand are added to the mass, and not even depressed times seem to limit this increase. The reason for this is patent; there is everything here that there is elsewhere, and much that can be found nowhere else; in every department of life, for earnest work in any special line, or for amusement—for sight-seeing, study, or fashion—it is here that the very best of everything is concentrated; the very cream of all the world is here, because no other place is large enough or rich enough to support it. To know the best that has been said and done in the world of the past is no doubt much, as Matthew Arnold says, but there is also much in seeing and living where the best of to-day is said and done, and if possible in the company of those who have said or done any of the best things in any line. Life with godlike men on earth must be the best preparative for companionship hereafter. This is possible in Britain only in London, for the celebrities and their works are centred here. An unusually large proportion of the population is of the wealthy classes, for the height of the average Briton's ambition is, in addition to the essential estate in the country, to be in possession of a mansion in London. After these are acquired, and his wife and daughters have been presented at court, any after- successes may be regarded as details which ornament the solid edifice of position attained; and truly, as far as I have seen human life in any part of the world, I know of no state which in itself seems capable of affording so much pleasure—were happiness dependent upon external circumstances—as that which rewards successful Britons when with their usual good sense they retire from business.
If the owner of a large estate in Britain with its hundreds of people, who are as it were, under his care, its pretty quaint villages and honeysuckled cottages, its running brooks, its hedge- rows and green fields, all giving him scope for change and improvement—if such a man is not happy and does not enjoy life, let him seek for some more favorable conditions in some other planet than this, say I. I must not attempt to follow our steps through England and Scotland, nor to tell you of the cordial welcomes and thousand kind attentions bestowed upon us. We spent a very, very happy month among dear kind friends, and never enjoyed Merrie England more. My mother and Miss F. joined us in London, and took care of us until we sailed for New York, which we did by the new Cunard steamer Gallia, June 14th, reaching New York on the 24th, exactly eight months from the day we sailed out of the Golden Gate. And now, June 25th, I write these lines at Cresson, on the crest of the Alleghanies, having reached our starting point and earned our right to fellowship with the favored fraternity of globe-trotters.
The voyage round the world should be made sailing westward from London or New York, as this gives the traveller the prevailing winds in his favor; at least after he reaches New York, for the Atlantic is never quite blessed with steady winds from the west. The trade-winds waft the traveller on his way when he goes toward the west; should he take the contrary direction and start via England to the East, he must experience many rough days and nights upon the sea. We saw the steamers from England battling against the monsoon, which only served to push us steadily and smoothly on. Let all my readers make due note of this—westward, not eastward. Another even greater advantage, at least to those who, like myself, are affected by heat, is obtained by taking the westward course: the various countries can be visited in months during which no extreme heat is possible. The best time to start from San Francisco is early in September, so that Japan is reached about the first of October, which is a delightful month in that pretty toy-land, neither too hot nor too cold. A month will enable the tourist to see all that is specially interesting—Yokohama, Yeddo, Kiobe, Kioto, Osaka, Nagasaki, and some of the notable inland sights. This brings him to China (Shanghai) the middle of November. After a few days there, a trip up the Yangtse, on one of the excellent American style of river boats, some six hundred miles to Hang-Kow, should not be missed, as one gets by this the best possible look at the Chinese at home. Hong Kong, the next stage, is reached, say early in December. Here you do Canton, Macao, and other interesting points, and reach Singapore, almost at the equator, and eat your Christmas dinner directly below your friends at home. If the reports from Java are favorable, a tempting excursion to that interesting island can be made from Singapore; but when we were at Singapore Europeans were being brought there from Java, and hurried north to cool places as the only cure for maladies contracted in that island. Therefore we abandoned our intended trip thither.
The traveller can decide whether to take steamer from Singapore via Bankok, Siam, and do that coast of Asia, and reach Calcutta from the west, or to follow our course via Ceylon. If he has plenty of time, the former may enable him to see more of India; but our experience was that there is more to see by any route than can be properly taken in upon one journey. If the wanderer follow us to Ceylon, we advise him to cross from Colombo to Southern India by steamer to Philipopolis, and go up through Southern India by land to Madras, as this will give him an opportunity to see the strange architecture and many customs peculiar to that region. We did the principal sights of India, but we advise any of our readers who make the journey, instead of returning from Delhi as we did, to go further north to Amritsir, and as far toward Cabool as the rail may extend. Simla upon the hills should also be visited. We often regret that we had not a week or two more to spend in India. We were rather late in the season, and Bombay was getting hot—indeed, it is always rather hot anywhere at the equator—but with the exception of a few hours at midday no great inconvenience was found, and the nights and the mornings were pleasant.
By the time the traveller has reached Egypt, and seen Alexandria and Cairo, he will be disposed, if our condition be any guide, to rest and be thankful, consigning any further extended travels to some future time when he has fully digested what he has gathered in his wanderings, and is fresh. When he touches pretty Catania, on his way west, he will feel for the first time that he is once more, as it were, at home among his own kith and kin, and has been quite long enough among strangers. Going round the world yields one exquisite pleasure which cannot be experienced upon any other tour. Our way over the long seas has not to be retraced. The farther we go, the nearer we come to home; every day's journey away from those we love, is also one day's step nearer to them. I think, also, that no amount of travel in detached portions of the world enables one to contemplate the world and the human race as a whole. One must traverse the ball round and round to arrive at a broad, liberal, correct estimate of humanity—its work, its aims, its destiny.
Go, therefore, my friends—all you who are so situated as to be able to avail yourselves of this privilege—go and see for yourselves how greatly we are bound by prejudices, how checkered and uncertain are many of our own advances, how very nearly all is balanced. No nation has all that is best, neither is any bereft of some advantages, and no nation, or tribe, or people is so unhappy that it would be willing to exchange its condition for that of any other. See, also, that in every society there are many individuals distinguished for traits of character which place them upon a par with the best and highest we know at home, and that such are everywhere regarded with esteem, and held up as models for lower and baser natures to emulate.
The traveller will not see in all his wanderings so much abject, repulsive misery among human beings in the most heathen lands, as that which startles him in his civilized Christian home, for nowhere are the extremes of wealth and poverty so painfully presented. He will learn, too, if he be observant, that very little is required after all to make mankind happy, and that the prizes of life worth contending for are, generally speaking, within the reach of the great mass.
Did you ever sum up these prizes and think how very little the millionaire has beyond the peasant, and how very often his additions tend not to happiness but to misery! What constitutes the choice food of the world? Plain beef, common vegetables and bread, and the best of all fruits—the apple; the only nectar bubbles from the brook without money and without price. All that our race eats or drinks beyond this range must be inferior, if not positively injurious. Dress—what man, or rather what woman wears—is less and less comfortable in proportion to its frills and its cost, and no jewel is so refined as the simple flower in the hair, which the village maid has for the plucking. All that women overload themselves with beyond this range is a source of unhappiness. To be the most simply attired is to be the most elegantly dressed. So much for true health and happiness in all that we eat, and drink, and wear.
If we extend the inquiry to the luxuries and adornments of life, is there any music—which of course comes first—comparable in grandeur to that of the wave, stirring the soul with its mighty organ tones as it breaks upon the beach, or any so exquisitely fine as that of the murmuring brook which sings its song forever to every listener upon its banks, while above birds warble and the zephyr plays its divine accompaniment among the trees! We spend fortunes for picture-galleries, but what are the tiny painted copies compared to the great originals, the mountains, the glens, the streams and waterfalls, the fertile fields, the breezy downs, the silver sea! These are the gems of the universal gallery, the common heritage of man, the property of the humblest who has eyes to see, and as free as the air we breathe. We have our conservatories and spend our thousands upon orchids, but which of nature's smiles ranks with the rose and the mignonette, the daisy and the bluebell, and the sweet forget-me-not blooming for all earth's children, and which grow upon the window-sill of the artisan and which the laborer blesses at his cottage door!
If we go higher still in the scale, we find that the companionship of the gods is not denied to the steady wage-receiving man, for Shakespeare and our Burns and our Scott can be had for sixpence per volume. In this blessed age in which we are privileged to live even the immortals are cheap and visit the toiler. We see the rich rolling over the land in their carriages, but blessed beyond these is the man who strolls along the hedge-rows. The connoisseur in his gallery misses the health-giving breeze which brings happiness to the devotee who seeks the original afield. The lady in her overheated conservatory knows nothing of the joyous rapture of her more fortunate sister who gathers the spoils of the glen. Ah, my friends, ponder well over this truth: the more one dwells with her, the more one draws from her, the closer one creeps to her bosom, the sweeter is nature's kiss. From man's neglect of her for meaner substitutes come most of the disappointment and unhappiness of life. The masses of mankind are happy all round the world because their pleasures are drawn so largely from sources which lie open to all. The rich are not to be envied, for truly "there is no purchase in money" of any real happiness. When used for our own gratification, it injures us; when used ostentatiously, it brings care; when hoarded, it narrows the soul. Nature has not provided a means by which any man can use riches for selfish purposes without suffering therefrom. There is only one source of true blessedness in wealth, and that comes from giving it away for ends that tend to elevate our brothers and enable them to share it with us. Nature is gloriously communistic after all, God bless her! and sees that a pretty fair division is made, let man hoard as he may. The secret of happiness is renunciation.