Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 1).djvu/15



Dr. Southey, speaking of the works of travellers, very justly remarks, that "of such books we cannot have too many!" and adds, with equal truth, that "because they contribute to the instruction of the learned, their reputation suffers no diminution by the course of time, but that age rather enhances their value." Every man, indeed, whose comprehensive mind enables him to sympathize with human nature under all its various aspects, and to detect—through the endless disguises superinduced by strange religions, policies, manners, or climate—passions, weaknesses, and virtues akin to his own, must peruse the relations of veracious travellers with peculiar satisfaction and delight. But there is another point of view in which the labours of this class of writers may be contemplated with advantage. Having made use of them as a species of telescope for bringing remote scenes near our intellectual eye, it may, perhaps, be of considerable utility to observe the effect of so many dissimilar and unusual objects, as necessarily present themselves to travellers, upon the mind, character, and happiness of the individuals who beheld them. This, in fact, is the business of the biographer; and it is what I have endeavoured to perform, to the best of my abilities, in the following "Lives."

By accompanying the adventurer through his distant enterprises, often far more bold and useful than any undertaken by king or conqueror, we insensibly