siatic things, of their institutions, history, modes of faith,
etc., is so impressive that to me the vast age of the race and name
overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems
to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, tho not bred in
any knowledge of such institutions, can not but shudder at the mystic
sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix,
through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be
awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much
to these feelings, that southern Asia is, and has been for thousands
of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life; the
great _officina gentium_. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast
empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always
been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with
all Oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in
common with the rest of southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of
life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of
sympathy placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyze. I
could sooner live with lunatics or brute animals. All this, and much
more than I can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into
before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of
Oriental imagery and mythological tortures imprest upon me. Under the
connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought
together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants,
usages and appearances, that are to be found in all tropical regions,
and assembled them together in China or Hindustan. From kindred
feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I
was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by
parrakeets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixt for
centuries at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the
priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of
Brahma, through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid
wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done a deed,
they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. I was buried
for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in
narrow chambers, at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with
cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and was laid, confounded with all