Part One Saint and Sceptic Chapter 8 By The Waters of Babylon

A deep tranquillity was in his soul ... a tranquillity that seemed to increase the further he went onward,--the restless weariness that had once possessed him was past, and a vaguely sweet content pervade his being like the odor of early roses pervading warm air ... he felt, he hoped, he loved! ... and yet his feelings, hopes, and longings turned to something altogether undeclared and indefinite, as softly dim and distant as the first faint white cloud-signal wafted from the moon in heaven, when, on the point of rising, she makes her queenly purpose known to her waiting star-attendants.

Practically considered, his journey was tedious and for the most part dull and uninteresting. In these Satan-like days of "going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it" travelling has lost much of its old romantic charm, . . the idea of traversing long distances no more fills the expectant adventurer with a pleasurable sense of uncertainty and mystery--he knows exactly what to anticipate.. it is all laid out for him plainly on the level lines of the commonplace, and nothing is left to his imagination.

The Continent of Europe has been ransacked from end to end by tourists who have turned it into a sort of exhausted pleasure-garden, whereof the various entertainments are too familiarly known to arouse any fresh curiosity,--the East is nearly in the same condition,--hordes of British and American sight-seers scamper over the empire-strewn soil of Persia and Syria with the unconcerned indifference of beings to whom not only a portion of the world's territory, but the whole world itself, belongs,--and soon there will not be an inch of ground left on the narrow extent of our poor planet that has not been trodden by the hasty, scrambling, irreverent footsteps of some one or other of the ever-prolific, all-spreading English-speaking race.