OVERLAND JOURNEY TO INDIA.
In a literary sense, Thackeray has conveyed the Londoner from Corn- till to Grand Cairo; pictorially, the Diorama at the Gallery of Illustra- - tion conveys him from Regent Street through Grand Cairo, and eke the Red Sea, verily to Ceylon and Calcutta : and it is astonishing how much .is squeezed into this rapid sweep of half the globe—done in two hours ! Arias self could only go all round in forty minutes—if that was not an unsubstantial boast. You sail out of Southampton Docks, passing Os- borne and the Needles ; you traverse the stormy Atlantic, with picked views from the coast of Portugal; you anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar, sweep past the African coast and once piratical Algiers; land at Malta, to survey that historic rock from a height, with its natural ramparts and broiling barrenness ; pass the waters of Alexandria by moonlight, land in the midst of an Egyptian population at Boulao—marshalled for you by John Absolon, whose clear style is a model for the diorama-painter; tra- verse the desert, and grow familiar with its European and Asiatic incon- gruities, its omnibuses and mounted Arabs; and so on by the Red Sea, fortified Aden, and verdant Ceylon, to the palace-crowded city of Cal- cutta. This painted vision is passed before you with all the illusion of the theatre, by Grieve and Telbin ; characteristic groups by Absolon ap- pear at every turn ; Herring and Weir supply the animals. Mr. Stocque- ler, himself not unknown to Indian service, and author of a Handbook of India, delivers at intervals a very agreeable and unpretending account of what you see. The picture is beautiful ; and in that one holyday-sight the boy from school may learn more, distinctly and fixedly, than in all "last half?'
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