The other is that admirable address on the study of the law of nature and nations, where Sir James Mackintosh, in words of singular felicity, alludes to “the tame but ancient and immovable civilization of China.”  It will be for us now to enlarge these pictures and to fill the canvas with life.

I do not know if it has occurred to our honored guest, that he is not the first stranger who, after sojourning in this distant unknown land, has come back loaded with its honors, and with messages to the Christian powers.  He is not without a predecessor in his mission.  There is another career as marvellous as his own.  I refer to the Venetian, Marco Polo, whose reports, once discredited as the fables of a traveller, are now recognized among the sources of history, and especially of geographical knowledge.  Nobody can read them without feeling their verity.  It was in the latter part of the far-away thirteenth century, that this enterprising Venetian, in company with his father and uncle, all of them merchants, journeyed from Venice, by the way of Constantinople, Trebizond, on the Black Sea, and Central Asia, until they reached first the land of Prester John, and then that golden country, known as Cathay, where the great ruler, Kubla Khan, treated them with gracious consideration, and employed young Polo as his ambassador.  This was none other than China, and the great ruler, called the Grand Khan, was none other than the first of its Mongolian dynasty, having his imperial residence in the immense city of Kambalu, or Peking.  After many years of illustrious service, the Venetian, with his companions, was dismissed with splendor and riches, charged with letters for European sovereigns, as our Bostonian is charged with similar letters now.  There were letters for the Pope, the King of France, the King of Spain, and other Christian princes.  It does not appear that England was expressly designated.  Her name, so great now, was not at that time on the visiting list of the distant Emperor.  Such are the contrasts in national life.  Marco Polo, with his companions, reached Venice on his return in 1295, at the very time when Dante, in Florence, was meditating his divine poem, and when Roger Bacon, in England, was astonishing the age with his knowledge.  These were two of his greatest contemporaries.

The return of the Venetian to his native city was attended by incidents which have not occurred among us.  Bronzed by long residence under the sun of the East—­wearing the dress of a Tartar—­and speaking his native language with difficulty, it was some time before he could persuade his friends of his identity.  Happily there is no question on the identity of our returned fellow-citizen; and surely it cannot be said that he speaks his native language with difficulty.  There was a dinner given at Venice, as now at Boston, and the Venetian dinner, after the lapse of nearly five hundred years, still lives in glowing description.  On this occasion Marco Polo,