"From the Asian kings, and Parthian amongst these;
From India and the golden Chersonese,
And utmost Indian isle Taprobane
Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;"
it is probable, from the mention of this island Taprobane following so closely after that of the Malabar peninsula, that Milton held it to be the island of Ceylon, and not of Sumatra. In this he does but follow the stream of geographical critics; and, upon the whole, if any one island exclusively is to be received for the Roman Taprobane, doubt there can be none that Ceylon has the superior title. But, as we know that, in regions less remote from Rome, Mona did not always mean the Isle of Man, nor Ultima Thule uniformly the Isle of Skye or of St Kilda—so it is pretty evident that features belonging to Sumatra, and probably to other oriental islands, blended (through mutual misconceptions of the parties, questioned and questioning) into one semi-fabulous object not entirely realized in any locality whatever. The case is precisely as if Cosmas Indicopleustes, visiting Scotland in the sixth century, should have placed the scene of any adventure in a town distant six miles from Glasgow and eight miles from Edinburgh. These we know to be irreconcilable conditions, such as cannot meet in any town whatever, past or present. But in such a case many circumstances might, notwithstanding, combine to throw a current of very strong suspicion upon Hamilton as the town concerned. On the same principle, it is easy to see that most of those Romans who spoke of Taprobane had Ceylon in their eye. But that all had not, and of those who really had, that some indicated by their facts very different islands, whilst designing to indicate Ceylon, is undeniable; since, amongst other imaginary characteristics of Taprobane, they make it extend considerably to the south of the line. Now, with respect to Ceylon, this is notoriously false; that island lies entirely in the northern tropic, and does not come within five (hardly more than six) degrees of the equator. Plain it is, therefore, that Taprobane, it construed very strictly, is an ens rationis, made up by fanciful composition from various sources, and much like our own mediæval conceit of Prester John's country, or the fancies (which have but recently vanished) of the African river Niger, and the golden city Tombuctoo. These were lies; and yet also, in a limited sense, they were truths. They were expansions, often fabulous and impossible, engrafted upon some basis of fact by the credulity of the traveller, or subsequently by misconception of the scholar. For instance, as to Tombuctoo, Leo Africanus had authorized men to believe in some vast African city, central to that great continent, and a focus to some mighty system of civilization. Others, improving on that chimera, asserted, that this glorious city represented an inheritance derived from ancient Carthage; here, it was said, survived the arts and arms of that injured state; hither, across Bilidulgerid, had the children of Phoenicia fled from the wrath of Rome; and the mighty phantom of him whose uplifted truncheon had pointed its path to the carnage of Cannæ, was still the tutelary genius watching over a vast posterity worthy of himself. Here was a wilderness of lies; yet, after all, the lies were but so many voluminous fasciæ, enveloping the mummy of an original truth. Mungo Park came, and the city of Tombuctoo was shown to be a real existence. Seeing was believing. And yet, if, before the time of Park, you had avowed a belief in Tombuctoo, you would have made yourself an indorser of that huge forgery which had so long circulated through the forum of Europe, and, in fact, a party to the total fraud.
We have thought it right to direct the reader's eye upon this correction of the common problem as to this or that place—Ceylon for example—answering to this or that classical name—because, in fact, the problem is more subtle than it appears to be. If you are asked whether you believe in the unicorn, undoubtedly you are within the letter of the truth in replying that you do; for there are several varieties of large animals which carry a single horn in the forehead.[15] But, virtually, by such an answer you would countenance a falsehood or a doubtful legend, since you are well aware that, in the idea of an unicorn, your questioner included the whole traditionary character of the unicorn, as an antagonist and emulator of the lion, &c.; under which fanciful description, this animal is properly ranked with the griffin, the mermaid, the basilisk, the dragon—and sometimes discussed in a supplementary chapter by the current zoologies, under the idea of heraldic and apocryphal natural history. When asked, therefore, whether Ceylon is Taprobane, the true answer is, not by affirmation simply, nor by negation simply, but by both at once; it is, and it is not. Taprobane includes much of what belongs to Ceylon, but also more, and also less. And this case is a type of many others standing in the same logical circumstances.
But, secondly, as to Ceylon being the local representative of Paradise, we may say, as the courteous Frenchman did to Dr Moore, upon the Doctor's apologetically remarking of a word which he had used, that he feared it was not good French—"Non, Monsieur, il n'est pas; mais il mérite bien l'être." Certainly, if Ceylon was not, at least it ought to have been, Paradise; for at this day there is no place on earth which better supports the paradisiacal character (always excepting Lapland, as an Upsal professor observes, and Wapping, as an old seaman reminds us) than this Pandora of islands, which the Hindoos call Lanka, and Europe calls Ceylon. We style it the "Pandora" of islands, because, as all the gods of the heathen clubbed their powers in creating that ideal woman—clothing her with perfections, and each separate deity subscribing to her dowery some separate gift—not less conspicuous, and not less comprehensive, has been the bounty of Providence, running through the whole diapason of possibilities, to this all-gorgeous island. Whatsoever it is that God has given by separate allotment and partition to other sections of the planet, all this he has given cumulatively and redundantly to Ceylon. Was she therefore happy, was Ceylon happier than other regions, through this hyper-tropical munificence of her Creator? No, she was not; and the reason was, because idolatrous darkness had planted curses where Heaven had planted blessings; because the insanity of man had defeated the graciousness of God. But another era is dawning for Ceylon; God will now countersign his other blessings, and ripen his possibilities into great harvests of realization, by superadding the one blessing of a dovelike religion; light is thickening apace, the horrid altars of Moloch are growing dim; woman will no more consent to forego her birthright as the daughter of God; man will cease to be the tiger-cat that, in the noblest chamber of Ceylon, he has ever been; and with the new hopes that will now blossom amidst the ancient beauties of this lovely island, Ceylon will but too deeply fulfill the functions of a paradise. Too subtly she will lay fascinations upon man; and it will need all the anguish of disease, and the stings of death, to unloose the ties which, in coming ages, must bind the hearts of her children to this Eden of the terraqueous globe.
Yet if, apart from all bravuras of rhetoric, Mr Bennett seriously presses the question regarding Paradise as a question in geography, we are sorry that we must vote against Ceylon, for the reason that heretofore we have pledged ourselves in print to vote in favour of Cashmeer; which beautiful vale, by the way, is omitted in Mr Bennett's list of the candidates for that distinction already entered upon the roll. Supposing the Paradise of Scripture to have had a local settlement upon our earth, and not in some extra-terrene orb, even in that case we cannot imagine that any thing could now survive, even so much as an angle or a curve, of its original outline. All rivers have altered their channels; many are altering them for ever.[16] Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing askance" of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relics, apparently it is the usage of God to hallow such remembrances by removing, abolishing, and confounding all traces of their punctual identities. That raises them to shadowy powers. By that process such remembrances pass from the state of base sensual signs, ministering only to a sensual servitude, into the state of great ideas—mysterious as spirituality is mysterious, and permanent as truth is permanent. Thus it is, and therefore it is, that Paradise has vanished; Luz is gone; Jacob's ladder is found only as an apparition in the clouds; the true cross survives no more among the Roman Catholics than the true ark is mouldering upon Ararat; no scholar can lay his hand upon Gethsemane; and for the grave of Moses the son of Amram, mightiest of lawgivers, though it is somewhere near Mount Nebo, and in a valley of Moab, yet eye has not been suffered to behold it, and "no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."[17]
If, however as to Paradise in connexion with Ceylon we are forced to say "No," if as to Taprobane in connexion with Ceylon we say both "Yes" and "No,"—not the less we come back with a reiterated "Yes, yes, yes," upon Ceylon as the crest and eagle's plume of the Indies, as the priceless pearl, the ruby without a flaw, and (once again we say it) as the Pandora of oriental islands.
Yet ends so glorious imply means of corresponding power; and advantages so comprehensive cannot be sustained unless by a machinery proportionately elaborate. Part of this machinery lies in the miraculous climate of Ceylon. Climate? She has all climates. Like some rare human favourite of nature, scattered at intervals along the line of a thousand years, who has been gifted so variously as to seem