As a boy no part of the world possessed a greater fascination for me than Babylonia and Assyria. This was, probably, because the first book I ever read contained wonderful stories of the Garden of Eden; of Babylon and its marvelous hanging gardens; of Nineveh and its magnificent temples and palaces; of the Tigris and the Euphrates whose waters were made to irrigate the vast and fecund plain of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization. So profound, indeed, was the impression made on me by the reading of this volume that one of the great desires of my life was one day to be able to visit the land whose history had so fascinated my youthful mind and whose people had played so conspicuous a rôle in the drama of human progress.
After many years, when the realization of my dreams seemed no longer possible, events so shaped themselves that I finally found myself, almost as if by enchantment, in a comfortable hotel on the famous Unter den Linden in Berlin making final arrangements for my long journey to
Romantic Bagdad, name to childhood dear,
Where the sorcerer gloomed, the genii dwelt,
And Love and Worth to good Al Rashid knelt.
Had I been in haste and been disposed to follow the most direct route, I should have taken the Orient Express which would have delivered me forty-nine hours later in the famed City of Constantine on the picturesque Bosphorus. But that would have been too prosaic and would have prevented me from feasting my eyes on many things which, during previous visits to Europe had given me special pleasure.
Chief among these was that supreme performance of pictorial art, Raphael’s Madonna of San Sisto in the Royal Art Gallery of Dresden. Although I had many times spent hours in silent contemplation of this masterpiece of the great Umbrian artist, I now felt a greater desire than ever to behold again this matchless creation of genius and feel myself again under the spell of its serene beauty and gaze once more on what has been called “the supernatural put into color and form”—“Christianity in miniature”—what Goethe sings of as
Model for mothers—queen of woman—
A magic brush has, by enchantment,
Fixed her there.