There Was No Lack Of Agreeable And
Intelligent Society At Palermo (Society That The Present Writer Recalls
With Cordial Regard), To Which Every Winter Brought Pleasant Temporary
Additions, Both English And Foreign, The Best Of Whom Generally Sought
Yule's Acquaintance.
Old friends too were not wanting; many found their
way to Palermo, and when such came, he was willing
To show them
hospitality and to take them excursions, and occasionally enjoyed these.
But though the beautiful city and surrounding country were full of charm
and interest, Yule was too much pre-occupied by his own special engrossing
pursuits ever really to get the good of his surroundings, of which indeed
he often seemed only half conscious.
By this time Yule had obtained, without ever having sought it, a distinct
and, in some respects, quite unique position in geographical science.
Although his Essay on the Geography of the Oxus Region (1872) received
comparatively little public attention at home, it had yet made its mark
once for all,[62] and from this time, if not earlier, Yule's high
authority in all questions of Central Asian geography was generally
recognised. He had long ere this, almost unconsciously, laid the broad
foundations of that "Yule method," of which Baron von Richthofen has
written so eloquently, declaring that not only in his own land, "but also
in the literatures of France, Italy, Germany, and other countries, the
powerful stimulating influence of the Yule method is visible."[63] More
than one writer has indeed boldly compared Central Asia before Yule to
Central Africa before Livingstone!
Yule had wrought from sheer love of the work and without expectation of
public recognition, and it was therefore a great surprise as well as
gratification to him, to find that the demand for his Marco Polo was
such as to justify the appearance of a second edition only a few years
after the first. The preparation of this enlarged edition, with much other
miscellaneous work (see subjoined bibliography), and the superintendence
of the building of the church already named, kept him fully occupied for
the next three years.
Amongst the parerga and miscellaneous occupations of Yule's leisure hours
in the period 1869-74, may be mentioned an interesting correspondence with
Professor W. W. Skeat on the subject of William of Palerne and Sicilian
examples of the Werwolf; the skilful analysis and exposure of Klaproth's
false geography;[64] the purchase and despatch of Sicilian seeds and young
trees for use in the Punjab, at the request of the Indian Forestry
Department; translations (prepared for friends) of tracts on the
cultivation of Sumach and the collection of Manna as practised in Sicily;
also a number of small services rendered to the South Kensington Museum,
at the request of the late Sir Henry Cole. These latter included obtaining
Italian and Sicilian bibliographic contributions to the Science and Art
Department's Catalogue of Books on Art, selecting architectural subjects
to be photographed;[65] negotiating the purchase of the original drawings
illustrative of Padre B. Gravina's great work on the Cathedral of
Monreale; and superintending the execution of a copy in mosaic of the
large mosaic picture (in the Norman Palatine Chapel, Palermo,) of the
Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem.
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