While we are at press, two works reach us of sufficient interest and importance to warrant us in undertaking to give them fuller notice in our next number-a new and enlarged edition of Mr. Caswall's standard work on the American Church,' (Mozleys,) and Mr. Isaac Williams On the Apocalypse.' (Rivingtons.)

The Truth about Rome,' (Houlston and Stoneman,) is certainly a new view: not only was not S. Peter Bishop of Rome, but he never was at Rome at all-further, he never was in Europe; and still further, not only were SS. Peter and Paul not martyred in Rome, but were never martyred. A proof that they never existed would, perhaps, have been simpler. The writer, an ingenious person, in a previous tract, Faith and Infidelity,' (Hatchard,) published in 1848, had thought proper to fix the fall of the Papacy in 1850-in the present work, 1851, p. 90, he quietly requests the readers of the Faith and Infidelity,' for 'A.D. 1850,' to read 'A.D. 1866.'

'The Planting of Nations a great Responsibility,' (Bell,) is the Bishop of Oxford's Jubilee Sermon,' preached at S. Mary's for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. It is written with all the distinguished writer's vigour and eloquence, and must have told in its delivery.

Of Sermons, and the like, we have to mention, and with approval—1. Mr. Huxtable's, preached at Wells, on the Use of Sponsors, '(Rivingtons.) 2. Two Addresses on Independence and Submission,' delivered at Harrow, by Dr. Vaughan, (J. W. Parker.) 3. By Mr. Rowland Williams, at the Visitation of Bishop of St. David's, to which is added, a Sermon at Lampeter, together with one of the most vigorous, plain-spoken, and severe brochures we have lately met with, A Defence of Lampeter College,' (J. W. Parker.) 4. Mr. Pearson's Visitation Sermon at Guildford,' (Masters.) 5. Dr. Hook's 'Duty of English Churchmen,' embodying a pleasing account of his stewardship at Leeds, (Murray.) 6. Which has attracted much attention, Bishop Fulford's remarkable 'Pastoral Letter,' (Rivingtons,) exposing the miserable proceedings of the Church and Colonial School Society. 7. Praise a Duty in the Church's Adversity,' by Mr. T. W. Perry. (J. H. Parker.)

P. S. Since the Article on 'Jansenism' was worked off, we have been informed by the Archbishop of Utrecht, that a third edition of the Abbé Bellegarde's History of that Church (to which we have already referred) is in the press, and will be rendered more valuable by a continuation to the present time. We have great pleasure in directing attention to the advertisement of this book. It is a work which relates, in an interesting style, and with great conciseness, all that the ordinary reader needs to be informed of the past history, and present condition, of the National Church of Holland.-In the same article, p. 110, line 18, for Cardinal Thomasius read Louis Thomassin.

THE

CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.

APRIL, 1852.

ART. I.-1. Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine. Par M. Huc, Prêtre Missionnaire de la Congrégation de Saint Lazare. Paris: Le Clere et Compie. 1850. 2. Eastern Monachism: an Account of the Origin, Laws, Discipline, Sacred Writings, Mysterious Rites, Religious Ceremonies, and Present Circumstances, of the Order of Mendicants founded by Gótama Budha, (compiled from Singhalese MSS. and other original sources of Information;) with comparative Notices of the Usages and Institutions of the Western Ascetics, and a Review of the Monastic System. By R. SPENCE HARDY, Member of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. London: Partridge & Oakey. 1850.

Or the above two books the first is the one which will furnish the basis of the present article; it is one of the most amusing which we have seen for a long time. It opens a new subject, and lays it before the reader with a vivacity and fulness of detail, which at once makes him at home with all the scenes and personages through which the travellers passed, and fixes in his mind a clear and life-like picture of Tartar, Chinese, and Thibetan character and circumstances.

The writers are two French Lazaristes, who in the year 1844 started from a small Christian settlement a little north of Pekin, in order to begin the conversion of the Tartars. Rounding the Great Wall, and the north of China, they worked their way through Mongol Tartary to Lassa, the capital of Thibet, which was their main object. After some stay in that city, they were sent back through the centre of Thibet and China to Macao, which they reached in the end of 1846. These two volumes give an account of their adventures from their first starting to the time when they reached the frontier of China on their return.

The men are admirably suited both for their task and for relating it. Quick and industrious in observation, shrewd in their estimate of character, graphic in their language, of inexhaustible good-humour, ardently loving the ups and downs of travel, not only for their object, but for their own sake, and keenly alive to the ridiculous, whether in others or in their own persons and misadventures, they would have been the very models of travelling companions; while a vein of stronger interest is kept up by their unaffected piety, breaking forth freely, though not obtrusively, in touching thoughts, and proved by a long course of self-denying and courageous action. They are Frenchmen all over-French in their dexterous politeness, their promptitude and courage under difficulty, their ready perception and use of an advantage, their cheerfulness under fatigue and disappointment-their contentment with their ordinary spare diet of oatmeal dipped into milkless and sometimes cold tea, and the well-earned satisfaction which they evince when able to vary that diet with the rare fish of the Hoang-Ho, or the exquisite rolls of Koun-boum-the hares of Tchogorten, or the delicate cookery of Lassa-French in the tinge of imaginative exaggeration which pervades their apprehension of things -French finally in the keen recollection that they are French, which leads them with some naïveté to appropriate to their country all the inventions of modern Europe, and to congratulate themselves that after a month in the metropolis of Thibet, they had taught its numerous inhabitants to speak with respect and admiration of the holy doctrine of Jehovah and the great kingdom of France.'

Their little caravan consisted of three camels, a white horse, and a black mule, on the last of which was mounted their only servant, Samdadchiemba, of a cross-breed race called Dchiaour, combining, says M. Huc, in some degree, the frank simplicity of the Tartar, the mischievous trickery of the Chinese, and 'the dauntless energy of the Thibetan,' a man of great personal strength, a dogged and capricious temper, and unshaken fidelity, with a Christianity very sincere, though considerably perplexed by the remnant of his Budhist superstitions.

We shall endeavour to bring together such extracts from their recollections' as shall illustrate first the character and relations of the Tartar, Chinese, and Thibetan, and next, the singular phenomena of the Budhist religion, which is, in a measure, common to them all, and, in spite of Mr. Spence Hardy's counter-statement, is the present witness through that great tract of country to the being of an Almighty God, and the duty of obeying His commands by loving Him, and our neighbour. As however we are writing not a treatise, but an article, we

shall not hesitate to sacrifice order and logical method to the amusement of our readers, whenever we are tempted out of our course by an unusually attractive extract.

The missionaries commenced their journey from a little village on the borders of Mongol-Tartary, where a small knot was collected of Chinese Christians, driven from China by persecution. Their first step, after attaining a knowledge of the Mongol language, and translating two or three religious books, was to cut off their hair, and adopt the yellow dress which has been rendered famous by the proceedings of Lord Torrington. This, with a forethought which was entirely justified by the result, they considered of the first necessity for their undertaking. It is the secular, or every day dress of the Lama, or Budhist priest, by which that large class is at once distinguished from the laity, or, as they are called by the Tartars, the black men. There is something whimsical in the satisfaction which M. Huc expresses at finding himself once more in a priestly costume, a forbidden luxury in China. But it was also a material advantage. A 'black man' who dogmatized about religion would be laughed at by the Tartars; but the yellow dress enabled the missionaries at once to take a religious tone with their chance companions, and commanded their attention and reverence. This reverence was always enhanced when the missionaries themselves announced themselves as Lamas of the west, (du ciel d'occident,) from which the Tartars imagine all religious knowledge to radiate. And to anticipate any charge of fraud, we should add, strange as it may appear, that this reverence was never diminished when the missionaries explained, as they always did, that this western heaven' was not that of the sacred city of Lassa, but a more distant and unknown country; and that the strangers were not Lamas of Budha, but of Him who is known in China as Jehovah,' the Lord of heaven.' But of this we shall have to say more hereafter; meanwhile we cannot begin the account of their travels more appropriately than by their own description of the country in which they were launched on leaving China.

'We had never passed through a finer country in finer weather. The desert is often frightful and horrible; but sometimes it possesses charms of its own; charms the more felt as they are rarer and unknown to inhabited countries. Tartary has a wholly peculiar aspect; nothing else in the world resembles a district of Tartary. In civilized countries, you meet at every step populous cities, high and varied cultivation, the thousand products of art and industry, the incessant bustle of trade. You feel as if driven before an immense whirlwind. In savage countries, you find primæval forests, with all the pride of their exuberant and gigantic vegetation; your mind is oppressed beneath the power and majesty of nature. Tartary resembles neither. There are no cities, no buildings, no arts, no industry, no cultivation, no forests. Always and everywhere there is but a great

prairie, sometimes broken by immense lakes, majestic rivers, bold and imposing mountains; sometimes opening out into illimitable plains. Then, when you find yourself in this green wilderness, bounded only by a distant horizon, you might fancy yourself on the ocean in calm weather. The view of the prairies of Mongolia excites neither joy nor sorrow; but rather a mixture of both-a melancholy and religious feeling, which gradually elevates the soul without making it wholly lose sight of things below; a feeling in which there is more of heaven than of earth, not unsuitable to the nature of an intelligent being informed by bodily senses.

1

'But sometimes you fall upon scenes of greater life and movement. It is when a numerous tribe has been attracted by the goodness of the water and of the pastures. Then tents of every size may be seen rising on every side, like inflated balloons on the point of springing into the air. The children, with baskets on their backs, crawl hither and thither to hunt for the argols which are piled round the tent. The mothers run after the young calves, boil the tea in the open air, or prepare the milk, while the men, mounted on fiery horses, and armed with a long pole, gallop in every direction, to guide into the choicest pastures the vast flocks which float and undulate in the distance, like the waves of the sea. Often, however, these animated pictures suddenly disappear, and nothing is seen where lately there was so much life. Men, tents, flocks, all seem to have vanished in a moment. You see nothing in the desert but heaps of ashes, halfextinguished fires, a few bones over which the birds of prey are quarrelling -the only traces which tell that the nomad Mongol has passed the day before. The reason of these sudden migrations, is only this-the animals have consumed the grass which covered the ground; the chief has therefore given the signal of departure, and all the shepherds have rolled up their tents; they have driven their flocks before them, and are gone to seek, it matters not where, new and fresher pastures.'-Vol. i. pp. 58-60.

Yet in these vast solitudes it is not uncommon to meet with the remains of large and fortified cities, now entirely deserted, and half buried by the accumulation of soil, singular and anomalous records of a state of things which has wholly passed away. It is conjectured from the Chinese records that they rose about

1 Argols, which form a very prominent feature in Tartar life, and consequently in M. Huc's book, are the dung of animals which form the only fuel of these countries. The following is an extract from his account of a day in the desert:'L'exercice qui suivait la méditation n'était pas, il faut en convenir, un exercice mystique; mais pourtant, il était très-nécessaire, et ne laissait pas d'avoir aussi ses charmes. Chacun prenait un sac sur son dos, et nous allions de côté et d'autre à la recherche des argols. Ceux qui n'ont jamais mené la vie nomade, comprendront difficilement que ce genre d'occupation soit susceptible d'être accompagné de jouissances. Pourtant, quand on a la bonne fortune de rencontrer, caché parmi les herbes, un argol recommandable par sa grosseur et sa siccité, on éprouve au cœur un petit frémissement de joie, une de ces émotions soudaines qui donnent un instant de bonheur. Le plaisir que procure la trouvaille d'un bel argol, est semblable à celui du chasseur, qui découvre avec transport les traces du gibier qu'il poursuit, de l'enfant qui regarde d'un oeil pétillant de joie le nid de fauvette qu'il a longtemps cherché, du pêcheur qui voit fretiller, suspendu à sa ligne, un joli poisson; et s'il était permis de rapprocher les petites choses des grandes, on pourrait encore comparer ce plaisir, à l'enthousiasme d'un Leverrier qui trouve une planète au bout de sa plume.'-Vol. i. pp. 240, 241.

There is a humorous honesty about this avowal which must not be despised by anybody who has ever hunted for mushrooms, fossils, or even blackberries.