er discovering the New World, died in the house of Columbus
at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to appropriate his journals, and
rob him of his fame?

Seriously; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real reputation of his
native city, let him do his best to have that preposterous and
discreditable fiction removed from the base of the statue. If Castaldi has
deserved a statue on other and truer grounds let _him_ stand; if not, let
him be burnt into honest lime! I imagine that the original story that
attracted Mr. Curzon was more _jeu d'esprit_ than anything else; but that
the author, finding what a stone he had set rolling, did not venture to
retract.

[Sidenote: Frequent opportunities for such introduction in the age
following Polo's.]

88. Mr. Curzon's own observations, which I have italicised about the
resemblance of the two systems are, however, very striking, and seem
clearly to indicate the derivation of the art from China. But I should
suppose that in the tradition, if there ever was any genuine tradition of
the kind at Feltre (a circumstance worthy of all doubt), the name of Marco
Polo was introduced merely because it was so prominent a name in Eastern
Travel. The fact has been generally overlooked and forgotten[24] that, for
many years in the course of the 14th century, not only were missionaries
of the Roman Church and Houses of the Franciscan Order established in the
chief cities of China, but a regular trade was carried on overland between
Italy and China, by way of Tana (or Azov), Astracan, Otrar and Kamul,
insomuch that instructions for the Italian merchant following that route
form the two first chapters in the Mercantile Handbook of Balducci
Pegolotti (circa 1340).[25] Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might
therefore have brought home the block-books. And this is the less to be
ascribed to him because he so curiously omits to speak of the art of
printing, when his subject seems absolutely to challenge its description.

[1] "They draw nowadays the map of the world in a laughable manner, for
they draw the inhabited earth as a circle; but this is impossible,
both from what we see and from reason." (_Meteorolog. Lib._ II.
cap. 5.) Cf. _Herodotus_, iv. 36.

[2] In Dante's Cosmography, Jerusalem is the centre of our [Greek:
oikoumenae], whilst the Mount of Purgatory occupies the middle of the
Antipodal hemisphere:--

"Come cio sia, se'l vuoi poter pensare,
Dentro