MARGINAL COMMENTS
By ROSE MACAULAY
VERY natural, proper and filial it is that the children of earth should feel a peculiar response to the word Geo, so that at every geographical scripture or picture that appears their hearts leap up. This I reflected, on seeing recently a new and handsome monthly periodical called, alluringly, The Geographical. Magazine. It set me considering afresh geography's lure, so much stronger than that of anthropography. How much less stirring are the political, social, and human aspects of a country than the colour and shape of its landscape and its buildings, the lie of its hills, valleys and rivers, in brief, its geomorphy. Anthropo- sophy is excellent and useful, but geosophy enchants. Philanthropy and philogyny are desirable, on every ground, but geophily is universal. There are misan- thropes and misogynists, but • who (except probably Uranus) is geomise, though we are all, very rightly, more or less geophobe. Anthroposcopy and gynoscopy are interesting and essential to those who live among human kind, since on the accuracy of such human observations our living in reasonable safety and felicity depends, and much entertainment ensues ; but geoscopy (also essential for security) has a deeper fascination. AS to beauty, who would not exchange any anthroporama that might spread before him for a georama ? Who (except, I suppose, a tailor) would not rather evea do geometry than spend his time in .anthropometry ? And is not geophagy, unnourishing practice though it be, a nicer habit than anthropophagy ? Just as geornancY is a more agreeable method of informing oneself about the future than anthropomancy, which is done by throwing human entrails about, and not, I think, worth any results obtained.
Far be it from me to appear a geomaniac, or even a geolater. I am as well aware as the next man that this earth we inhabit is riddled and speckled with ridiculous faults, horrid cavities, flaming mountains, stinking marshes, fetid jungle swamps, frozen wastes, arid deserts, unnecessary projections and formations more peculiar than admirable. Heaven knows, partial as I am to geotrotting, that I had as lief my geoscopy were per- formed at a safe distance from much that geognosties tell me is to be found on the earth's face. It is to assist us in this safe and easy geo-tele-scopy that all this geography, or writing about the earth, comes in, this geobiblionism, that allows us to be travellers de luxe in our arm-chairs, that transports us from Kangaroo Island to Timbuctoo, from the torrid zone to the Poles, from Ethiopia to Thibet, by the lazy flick of a page.
Gentlemen (and, of course, gentlewomen) must travel, as that great vicarious peregrine, Samuel Purchas, in his preface to his voluminous Pilgrimages, observes. " As to gentlemen," says he, " travel is accounted an excellent ornament to them." But, he adds, many gentlemen contract on their travels bad habits, and " are in danger to travel from God and themselves." To such, as to those who cannot travel far, he offers " at no great charge. a world of travellers to their domestic entertainment." He congratulates himself• and us that we can from the shore behold with safety and delight the dangerous navigations and expeditions of our countrymen, enjoying the sweet contemplation of their laborious actions. And so, " I may write with ink at leisure, and you read with pleasure, what these Pilgrims have written with hazard,- if not with blood, in remote seas and lands." This might stand as motto to a geographical magazine.
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