In the celebration on Wednesday of the jubilee of Mr.
Cook's great undertaking for lightening the responsibilities- and difficulties of travellers, Mr. Cook was treated as- a star of quite the first magnitude. His services to the Mahommedan pilgrims to Mecca have no doubt been very great, to say nothing of the millions of tickets which he- issues yearly to English travellers. In a democratic age, it is quite right that the great populariser of travel should_ receive the incense of popular homage ; but it cannot be denied that in removing so many of the dangers and difficulties of travel, Mr. Cook has dissipated a great part of its halo of romance. When the late Mr. Kin glake found himself dashing- through the desert on a fleet dromedary without a single guide or attendant, and even deposited helpless on the ground_ by a sudden jerk of the animal, night coming on and his steed vanishing into the darkness, he did really experience one of the perils which lend much more than half the charm to- travel,—at least as it is seen in memory. But Mr. Cook has. taken the best security that the traveller of the present and the future shall incur no such risks, and recall no such thrilling experience. That, perhaps, is a dubious boon.
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