University of Virginia Library

1. THE
PILGRIM OF OUTRE-MER.

1. THE
PILGRIM OF OUTRE-MER.

`Lystenyth ye godely gentylmen, and all
that ben hereyn!' I am a pilgrim benighted
on my way, and crave a shelter till the storm
is over, and a seat by the fireside in this honorable
company. As a stranger I claim this
courtesy at your hands; and will repay your
hospitable welcome with tales of the countries
I have passed through in my pilgrimage.

This is a custom of the olden time. In the
days of Chivalry and romance, every baron
bold, perched aloof in his feudal castle, welcomed
the stranger to his halls, and listened
with delight to the pilgrim's tale, and the song

of the troubadour. Both pilgrim and troubadour
had their tales of wonder from a distant
land, embellished with the magic of oriental
exaggeration. Their salutation was,
The soft luxuriance of the eastern clime
bloomed in the song of the bard; and the wild
and romantic tales of regions so far off, as to be
regarded as almost a fairy land, were well suited
to the childish credulity of an age, when what
is now called the old world was in its childhood.
Those times have passed away. The
world has grown wiser and less credulous;—
and the tales, which then delighted, delight no
longer. But man has not changed his nature.
He still retains the same curiosity—the same
love of novelty—the same fondness for romance,
and tales by the chimney corner—and
the same desire of wearing out the rainy day
and the long winter evening with the illusions of
fancy, and the fairy sketches of the poet's imagination.—It
is as true now as ever, that

The Pays d'Outre-Mer, or the Land beyond
the Sea, is a name by which the pilgrims
and crusaders of old usually designated the Holy
Land. I, too, in a certain sense, have been
a pilgrim of Outre-Mer; for to my youthful
imagination the old world was a kind of Holy
Land, lying afar off beyond the blue horizon of
the ocean; and when its shores first rose upon
my sight, looming through the hazy atmosphere
of the sea, my heart swelled with the deep
emotions of the pilgrim, when he sees afar the
spire which rises above the shrine of his devotion.

In this my pilgrimage “I have passed many
lands, and countries, and searched many full
strange places.” I have traversed France from
Normandy to Navarre;—smoked my pipe in a
Flemish inn;—floated through Holland in a
Trekschuit; trimmed my midnight lamp in a
German university; wandered and mused
amid the classic scenes of Italy; and listened
to the gay guitar and merry castanet on the
borders of the blue Guadalquiver. The recollection

of many of the scenes I have passed
through is still fresh in my mind; whilst the
memory of others is fast fading away, or is blotted
out forever. But now I will stay the too
busy hand of time, and call back the shadowy
past. Perchance the old and the wise may accuse
me of frivolity; but I see in this fair company
the bright eye and listening ear of youth,
—an age less rigid in its censure and more
willing to be pleased. “To gentlewomen and
their loves is consecrated all the wooing language,
allusions to love-passions, and sweet
embracements feigned by the muse, mongst
hills and rivers;—whatsoever tastes of description,
battell, story, abstruse antiquity, and
law of the kingdome, to the more severe critic.
To the one, be contenting enjoyments of their
auspicious desires: to the other, a happy attendance
of their chosen muses.”[1]

And now, fair Dames, and courteous Gentlemen,
give me attentive audience;—