with his companions, appeared first in long robes of crimson satin reaching to the floor, which, after the guests had washed their hands, were changed for other robes of crimson damask, and then again, after the first course of the dinner, for other robes of crimson velvet, and at the conclusion of the banquet, for the ordinary dress worn by the rest of the company.  Meanwhile the other costly garments were distributed in succession among the attendants at the table.  In all your magnificence to-night, Mr. Mayor, I have seen no such largess.  Then was brought forward the coarse threadbare clothes in which they had travelled, when, on ripping the lining and patches with a knife, costly jewels, in sparkling showers, leaped forth before the eyes of the company, who for a time were motionless with wonder.  Then at last, says the Italian chronicler, every doubt was banished, and all were satisfied that these were the valiant and honorable gentlemen of the house of Polo.  I do not relate this history in order to suggest any such operation on the dress of our returned fellow-citizen.  No such evidence is needed to assure us of his identity.

The success of Marco Polo is amply attested.  From his habit of speaking of millions of people and millions of money, he was known as millioni, or the millionnaire, being the earliest instance in history of a designation so common in our prosperous age.  But better than “millions” was the knowledge he imparted, and the impulse that he gave to that science, which teaches the configuration of the globe, and the place of nations on its surface.  His travels, as dictated by him, were reproduced in various languages, and, after the invention of printing, the book was multiplied in more than fifty editions.  Unquestionably it prepared the way for the two greatest geographical discoveries of modern times, that of the Cape of Good Hope, by Vasco de Gama, and the New World, by Christopher Columbus.  One of his admirers, a learned German, does not hesitate to say that, when, in the long series of ages, we seek the three men, who, by the influence of their discoveries, have most contributed to the progress of geography and the knowledge of the globe, the modest name of the Venetian finds a place in the same line with Alexander the Great and Christopher Columbus.  It is well known that the imagination of the Genoese navigator was fired by the revelations of the Venetian, and that, in his mind, all the countries embraced by his transcendent discovery were none other than the famed Cathay, with its various dependencies.  In his report to the Spanish Sovereigns, Cuba was nothing else than Xipangu, or Japan, as described by the Venetian, and he thought himself near a grand Khan, meaning, as he says, a king of kings.  Columbus was mistaken.  He had not reached Cathay or the Grand Khan; but he had discovered a new world, destined in the history of civilization to be more than Cathay, and, in the lapse of time, to welcome the ambassador of the grand Khan.