“I know of nothing more moving, indeed semi-tragic, than the yearning helplessnes…” — Bayard Taylor

People can't see that if I had not been a poet, I could never have had such success as a traveler.

Verily there is nothing in all Europe so beautiful as Valldemosa.

So far as female beauty is concerned, the Circassian women have no superiors. They have preserved in their mountain home the purity of the Grecian models, and still display the perfect physical loveliness, whose type has descended to us in the Venus de Medici.

Although Damascus is considered the oldest city in the world, the date of its foundation going beyond tradition, there are very few relics of antiquity in or near it.