If in this position there be much to excite wonder, there is still more for gratitude in the unparalleled opportunity it affords. What we all ask is opportunity. Here is opportunity on a surpassing scale,—employed, I am sure, to advance the best interests of the human family; and if these are advanced, no nation can suffer. Each is contained in all. With justice and generosity as the reciprocal rule,—and nothing else can be the aim of this great Embassy,—there can be no limits to the immeasurable consequences. Nor can I hesitate to say that concessions and privileges are of less consequence than that spirit of friendship and good neighborhood, embracing alike the distant and the near, which, once established, renders all else easy.
The necessary result of the present experiment in diplomacy will be to make the countries it visits better known to the Chinese, and also to make the Chinese better known to them. Each will know the other better, and better comprehend that condition of mutual dependence which is the law of humanity. In relations among nations, as in common life, this is of infinite value. Thus far, I fear the Chinese are poorly informed with regard to us. I am sure 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 descending in his flight
“on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany wagons light.”[262]
The other is in that admirable “Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations,” where Sir James Mackintosh, in words of singular felicity, points to “the tame, but ancient and immovable civilization of China.”[263] It is for us at last 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, with his father and uncle, all 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 that golden country known as Cathay, where the lofty ruler, Kublaï Khan, treated them with gracious consideration, and employed young Polo as his ambassador. This was none other than China, and the lofty ruler, called the Grand Khan, was none other than the first of its Mongolian dynasty, having his imperial residence in the immense city of Kambalu, or Peking. After many years of illustrious service, the Venetian, with his companions, was dismissed with splendor and riches, charged with letters for European sovereigns, as our Bostonian is charged with similar letters now. There were letters for the Pope, the King of France, the King of Spain, and other Christian princes. It does not appear that England was expressly designated. Her name, so great now, was not at that time on the visiting list of the distant Emperor. Such are the contrasts in national life. Marco Polo reached Venice, on his return, in 1295, at the very time when Dante, in Florence, was meditating his divine poem, and Roger Bacon, in England, was astonishing the age with his knowledge. These were his two greatest contemporaries, constituting with himself the triumvirate of the century.
The return of the Venetian to his native city was attended by incidents which have not occurred among us. Bronzed by long residence under the sun of the East, wearing the dress of a Tartar, and speaking his native language with difficulty, it was some time before his friends could be persuaded of his identity. Happily there is no question on the identity of our returned fellow-citizen; and surely it cannot be said that he speaks his native language with difficulty. A dinner was spread at Venice as here at Boston, and now, after the lapse of nearly six hundred years, the Venetian dinner still lives in glowing description. Marco Polo, with his companions, appeared first in long robes of crimson satin reaching to the floor, which, when the guests had washed their hands, were changed for other robes of crimson damask, and then again, after the first course, for other robes of crimson velvet, and at the conclusion of the banquet, for the ordinary dress worn by the rest of the company. Meanwhile the other costly garments were distributed among the attendants at the table. In all your magnificence to-night, Mr. Mayor, I have seen no such largess. Then were brought forward the coarse threadbare garments in which they had travelled, when, on ripping the lining and patches with a knife, costly jewels, in sparkling showers, leaped forth before the eyes of the company, who for a time were motionless with wonder. Then at last, says the Italian chronicler, every doubt was banished, and all were satisfied that these were the valiant and honorable gentlemen of the house of Polo. I do not relate this history to suggest any such operation on the dress of our returned fellow-citizen. No such evidence is needed to assure us of his identity.
The success of Marco Polo is amply attested. From his habit of speaking of “millions” of people and “millions” of money, he was known as Messer Millioni, or the millionaire, being the earliest instance in history of a designation so common in our prosperous age. But better than “millions” was the knowledge he imparted, and the impulse he gave to that science which teaches the configuration of the globe and the place of nations on its face. His travels, dictated by him, were reproduced in various languages, and, after the invention of printing, the book was multiplied in more than fifty editions. Unquestionably it prepared the way for the two greatest geographical discoveries of modern times,—the Cape of Good Hope, by Vasco da Gama, and the New World, by Christopher Columbus. One of his admirers, a French savant, does not hesitate to say, that, “when, in the long series of ages, we seek the three men who, by the magnitude and influence of their discoveries, have most contributed to the progress of geography or the knowledge of the globe, the modest name of the Venetian traveller finds a place in the same line with those of Alexander the Great and Christopher Columbus.”[264] It is well known that the imagination of the Genoese navigator was fired by the revelations of the Venetian, and that, in his mind, the countries embraced by his transcendent discovery were none other than the famed Cathay, with its various dependencies. In his report to the Spanish sovereigns, Cuba was nothing else than Zipangu, or Japan, as described by the Venetian, and he thought himself near a Grand Khan,—meaning, as he says, a king of kings. Columbus was mistaken. He had not reached Cathay or the Grand Khan; but he had discovered a new world, destined in the history of civilization to be more than Cathay, and, in the lapse of time, to welcome the Ambassador of the Grand Khan.
The Venetian, returning home, journeyed out of the East, westward; our Marco Polo, returning home, journeyed out of the West, eastward. And yet they both came from the same region: their common starting-point was Peking. This change is typical of the surpassing revolution under whose influence the Orient will become the Occident. Journeying westward, the first welcome is from the nations of Europe; journeying eastward, the first welcome is from our Republic. It remains that this welcome should be extended, until, opening a pathway for the mightiest commerce of the world, it embraces within the sphere of American activity that ancient ancestral empire, where population, industry, and education, on an unprecedented scale, create resources and necessities on an unprecedented scale also. See to it, merchants of the United States, and you, merchants of Boston, that this opportunity is not lost.