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PUTTING A PANORAMA ROUND THE EARTH.
TRAVELLING is now-a-days so cheap, that it is brought within the means of the meanest pocket. A miser, starting from Burlington Arcade, could easily travel round the world for five shillings.
if this cheapness spreads much further, the longest, and dearest journey will shortly be from Hungerford Bridge to Paddington for 2t1.
We have enjoyed many cheap excursions lately. We have visited every quarter of the universe at Egyptian Hall—have been stirred up with the North Pole by MR. BURFORD in Leicester Square—have emigrated to New Zealand, and been brought back again in less than two hours by MR. BREEs—and know every feature of every river that has had its likeness taken on a piece of canvas, not more than three miles long. We have enjoyed all these little trips, and thought them wonderfully cheap, and wonderfully quick—but it seems that travelling was then in its stage-coach days of infancy. Paintings now move with the rapidity of steam—and an artist, who has anything of the quickness of the fox with his brush, will paint you a Panorama, long enough to go round the Globe, in less time almost than A1UEL boasted of putting a
girdle round it.. -
The latest pictorial girdle of this kind is the Overland .Mail, and a most lovely work of art it is, radiant with beauty, and sparkling with the most costly Indian gems.
We do not know the exact length of it, and really you follow its winding course with such a happy feeling of enjoyment., that, if it were three times as long as it is, you would still feel a regret that it had come so abruptly to an end.
The various pictures which turn this girdle into an ever-varying Gallery of Illustration, are taken from subjects which the traveller picks up on his road, between Southampton Docks and Calcutta.
These subjects are composed of half water, half sand. These materials might be objected to as being too wishy-washy and too dry for a long Panorama, but we can only say that, in the hands of the artists engaged, the water is such delicious water, that it only gives you a thirst fcr more, and that the sand is such superior sand, that it shines with aU the interest of gold in your eyes.
Moreover, the water is dancing in every direction with ships and boats, and steamers, dressed out gaily with flags and sea’nen of every colour in the world—and, besides, it has a handsome border of scenery, with tints so dazzling, that a French ribbon would give you no more idea of their lustrous combination, than an omelette could of one of TURNER’S gorgeous pictures.
The sand, also, is alive with Arabs, and omnibuses, and caravans, and Cockuies dancing the Polka. Camels, too, are dying—which is a great proof of the picture’s accuracy, for we never recollect a view of the Desert yet, but that there was sure to be a camel dying in it. This poor animal must be the JOHN O’CONNELL of quadrupeds, for he is a1wa s “laying down his life.”
The omnibuses, by-the-bye, are very like our bathing machines, with the curtains taken off. if they are licensed to carry fourteen inside, we should be very sorry to be the fourteenth. They have no seand, either, for the conductor behind, which must be very inconvenient if a Sheikh wants to be taken up, or any “son of a dog” wants to be put down, in the middle of the Desert.
Of the two halves, we like the sandy half the better. The fact is, that surrounded as we are with water, and flooded as we have been with the Nile and Mississippi, and other Panoramas that, like S0YER’s Pauper Soup were full of scarcely anything but water, it is but natural that that fluid however perfect. and unlike the Thames it may be, should pall a little on the public, and the artist’s palette. This is the reason why the sand “a
cog yesgr,” as the French say, with the greater pleasure, and the pleasure must have been something very exquisite, when we assure the reader that we kept the sand for full half an hour in our eye, and never felt a moment’s desire to have it removed. The horses do everything but neigh. Their coats shine as if they were made out of the richest silks and sa+ ins, and, altogether, they are so beautifully dressed, that we think none but a lady in the height of fashion, could ride them.
Everything is turned off in the most finished manner, excepting the caravan, which, like a black, creeping, river, winds along, and is lost in the distance, the camels’ humps looking not unlike a long line of waves, trying to leap over one another.
We should like to stop a whole day at Malta—and to tarry for a whole night at Cairo, walking and mooning about, reading the Arabian Nights, but we are afraid the proprietors might object, and would be turning us
out of the room The reader must visit them himself, for unless we had a pen that had the gift of colours, like MR. GRIEVE’s brush, it would be folly attempting to describe pictures that, when seen, speak for themselves so much more eloquently than words.
We have reached Calcutta :—and by the noise and shuffling are reminded that we have never left London. It is most curious on coming out into Regent Street to find that the porters and cabin en are not black, and that persons are riding on horses instead of camels. We call for our palankeen, and we sigh when the film falls from our eyes, as a Hansom is brought to the door. We rush back to the “City of Palaces”
—but, alas! the Exhibition is closed! It doubles up one’s heart as flat as a Gibus hat., to be compelled to stop in this ugly mews-yard of a metropolis, after the beautiful cities we have just feasted our eyes upon.