upon; but we do not see that in relation to the struggle going on there is any peculiar interest attaching to the Druses. They appear to be the special favourites of Mr. Chasseaud, to the exclusion of the other inhabitants of Lebanon. We have our own preferences, but have no right to quarrel with his, and if they make him a diligent and careful explorer, an accurate and faithful historian, so much the better for him and for the public. It is to be hoped our author has only taken the initiative in this matter, and that he will be followed by others, or take up the matter himself at a later period, bettered by experience and study.

Birth and residence in a country, though not to be overlooked in any one who undertakes to write its history, are not of that primary importance that the author would seem to imagine, and although they may secure faith for what he does write, they will neither make his manner of writing pass current, nor obtain indulgence for his omissions. There were a good many things entitled to commendation, as well as open to criticism, which we should gladly have noticed, but we are obliged to close for the present, too early, indeed, for the merit of the work, or the interest of the subject. We are willing to hope, however, that the labours of future investigators in the same field, which, in truth, is scarcely broken, may occasion a resumption of our own task, and we entertain no doubt that any work including a history of the conflict which began in 1841, between the Druses and Maronites, would of necessity record incidents as striking and dramatic, episodes as moving, achievements as daring, and horrors as atrocious, as any in the annals of mountain warfare.

་

ART. VI. (1.) The Chinese Empire; forming a Sequel to the Work entitled, Recollections of a Journey through Tartary and Thibet." By M. Huc, formerly Missionary Apostolic in China. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Longmans, 1855.

(2.) History of the Insurrection in China; with Notices of the Christiunity, Creed, and Proclamations of the Insurgents. By MM. CALLERY and IVAN. 8vo. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1853. (3.) Discoveries in Chinese; or the Symbolism of the Primitive Characters of the Chinese System of Writing. By STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS. 8vo. New York: Norton, 1854,

THE HE historian of Lord Macartney's embassy to China confesses, that "they entered Pekin like beggars, stayed in it like prisoners, and were driven out of it like thieves." If the truth were fairly told, such has been the normal condition of modern travellers in China. Even the so-called "opening" of the Celestial Empire has afforded marvellously small opportunity for observation: and there needs but little scrutiny, if any, of the vapid and superficial narratives to which it has given occasion, in order to discover that if the writers tell but little, it is simply because they themselves have seen even less than what they relate.

As regards the open ports, it is true, the facilities of observation have been very materially enlarged since the termination of the war. But it would be a great fallacy to receive a description of the half-europeanized society of these mere depôts of commerce, as a complete, or generally faithful picture of the social condition of the three hundred and sixty millions which jostle each other throughout the countless cities, towns, villages, lakes, rivers, and canals of this overgrown and over-peopled empire. And, for the rest of China, the real facilities of travelling; the opportunities of seeing the country, of examining its institutions and becoming familiar with its usages; the means, in a word, of obtaining an exact idea of its social peculiarities, are not one jot greater than in the old days of absolute exclusion. " The situation of travellers in China,' says M. Abel Remusat, "is not usually an enviable one.

At their departure from Canton they are imprisoned in closed boats; they are guarded carefully from sight all along the great canal; they are what we may call put under arrest immediately on their arrival at Pekin; and, after two or three official receptions and interrogatories, they are hastily sent back again. As they are not allowed the slightest communication with the outer world, they can really describe from their own knowledge nothing more than the hedge of soldiers by which they have been surrounded, the songs of the boatmen who have accompanied them, the formalities employed by the inspectors who have searched them, and the evolutions of the grandees who prostrated themselves with them before the Son of Heaven.

It may well be doubted, therefore, whether the recent contributions to our stock of information regarding China, are in reality such as materially to modify the ideas which have prevailed since the publication of the various memoirs of the early Jesuit missionaries. Their information was obtained in circumstances very different from those of the modern traveller. The favour which they enjoyed under the benevolent emperor, Khang-hi, opened for them an access, not only to all the historical records of the empire, to its public institutions, and to the detail of its laws, its constitution, its agriculture, and its commerce, but to all those social and religious peculiarities which, even still, constitute the great puzzle of private life in China. The familiarity, too, with the Chinese language and literature, which long residence and careful and judicious study imparted, gives an air of solidity and confidence to their statements, very different from the half wonder, half conjecture of their modern successors; and above all, the spirit of association in which they compiled their information, and the mutual light and assistance, which, as members of one great body, and fellow-labourers in one great and holy cause, they communicated to each other;-have made their narratives appear not the work of a single writer, or the result of the experience of a single observer, but the fruit of the joint observation and the united intelligence of the most eminent members of this memorable mission.

Such was the deliberate judgment of the greatest master of Chinese literature that the world has ever yet seenM. Abel Remusat. The theoretical opinion which M.

Remusat drew from his profound and familiar book-knowledge, is fully confirmed by the practical judgment to which the writer of the admirable work now before us, has arrived after long years of travel and residence in the country, and manifold experience of life among the singular races of this vast empire, from the beggar to the mandarin, and in all its motley forms, from the palace to the mountain hamlet.

Our readers, we are assured, will need no introduction to Père Huc, the lively and brilliant author of "The Chinese Empire." When last we took leave of this pleasant writer, it was with the earnest hope that, as the concluding paragraphs of his "Travels in Tartary and Tibet" seemed to promise, we might "meet him again soon and often." Even then, however, we scarcely hoped for so important and valuable a contribution to our knowledge of China and its institutions, as that with which we are here presented, as the fruit of his interval of leisure. The Chinese Empire" is not, like the author's earlier work, a mere traveller's tale of what he had heard and seen in his adventurous journey; it is a learned, laborious, and scholar-like description of all that is most notable, as well as most characteristic, in the entire condition of the country which was the scene of his travel. And it is no exaggeration to say, that the volumes now upon our table form a compendious, but most comprehensive, encyclopædia of the religion, the laws, the usages, and institutions of China.

66

In so far, however, as the work is a personal narrative, it may be regarded as a sequel to the "Travels in Tartary and Tibet." At the close of that interesting narrative, we left Père Huc, and his devoted companion and fellow-missionary, Père Gabet, upon the extreme western frontier of China; which they had reached on their return from Tibet, by order of Ki-chan, the Chinese resident at the Tibetan capital, Lha-Ssa. By command of this jealous and officious functionary, they were proceeding under escort to present themselves before the authorities of the empire, and to render an account of the objects and motives which had prompted their unwonted and almost unheard of undertaking. The purpose of the present work, therefore, is to complete the history of that most interesting expedition. It contains the record of their journey from Ta-tsien-lou, on the extreme western border of China, to Canton and

Macao-a journey which traversed nearly the entire eastern and western diameter of the Chinese territory.

But Père Huc's work is far more than a personal narrative. He has contrived to string together, in a most interesting sketch of which his own personal adventures supply the outline, the results of his observation, and the fruits of his study, not only during this eventful journey, (and another journey equally adventurous, extending along the north and south diameter,) but also during a residence of above ten years in different parts of the empire. In this regard, the work is far more elaborate than the Travels in Tartary; and in every respect it is more important for the purposes of the general scholar.

There is another difference between Père Huc's "China," and the "Tartary and Tibet" of the same author, which the reader will not observe without deep pain and regret the absence from its title-page of the honoured name of Père Gabet, with which that of M. Huc was so long associated, both in the former work itself, and in their numerous and valuable contributions to the "Annals of the Propagation of the Faith." The good and zealous father, for so many years the associate of his toils and the companion of his wanderings, has been taken from him by death since his last publication. After surviving all the perils of the mountain and the desert, and for years braving captivity and death, in the various forms in which, in later times, they have been always present to the missionary in this jealous empire, Père Gabet died upon the homeward passage to Europe; on which he had set out alone, in order to take measures for re-organizing a missionary expedition to the kingdom of Tibet, from which he had himself been so summarily ejected.

Père Huc appears, therefore, as the sole author of the "Chinese Empire.'

The travellers had been conducted by the escort assigned to them at Lha-Ssa, as far as Ta-tsien-lou, a small town upon the frontier of China. From this point the duty of providing for their transit devolved upon the local Chinese authorities; and in the first place on the authorities of the province of Sse-tchouen, the first through which their homeward route lay. Their case, indeed, had been referred for adjudication to the governor of that province, the viceroy Pao- King, cousin and intimate friend of the