MARCO POLO. 47 



savages scarcely possessing- the human form: and, when 

 M,arco Polo spoke of a Tartar empire larger and more civilised 

 than the whole of Europe, governed by an emperor, having a 

 court and regular tribunals of justice when he spoke of 

 China, its manners and institutions, so remote from those 

 which were then known, of animals of new forms, and of 

 natural phenomena so strange how could he expect, in an 

 ignorant age, to gain credence for half the wonders which he 

 recounted 1 * 



* Walckenaer, in Biographic Universelle. 



