good creature would be my safeguard, and I attempted to write: I could not command an idea-I was crushed by a terrible deceit! I recoiled at the idea of so soon causing so much sorrow to my friends-my tenderness refused to tell them half my anguish-my pride so soon to play the part of victim. A hundred leagues separated us. Long days must pass ere I could bring them to my side. What would become of me during these long days? What should I do? My God! what should I do? The grey colour of the heavens, darkening as night approached, added to the indignation which filled me at the deceit I suffered from-the greater and more repugnant fear of the nocturnal tête-à-tête, which I dreaded so much, and could no longer shun. I have never known hatred: but when my heart is wounded, I am powerless to master my indignation. At that moment I should have sickened if M. Lafarge had kissed my hand—in his arms I should have perished. Suddenly my part was taken-I resolved to leave him-to fly to the end of the world; but especially not to pass the night within these dismal walls. That firm resolve rendered me a little calmer; but a means of executing it must yet be found. My imagination came to my aid; I resolved to obtain from M. Lafarge himself an order to depart-to wound his pride, his jealousy, and his honour; to render a reconciliation impossible-to tell him that I did not love him; to tell him that I loved another, and that, violating my recent oaths, I had seen his rival at Orleans and at Uzerche. In short, to tell him that all my married thoughts had been adulterous! Never could I have dared use that frightful word—never could I have repeated aloud so many humiliating lies; but the paper blushed not, and I trusted it, in all the bitterness of my heart, with the care of my deliverance. Having written several pages, I wished to reperuse my letter: its energy appalled me, but I saw that I was saved. After reading it, they might kill me, but it was impossible to retain me, or to pardon. They came to call me. I placed the letter in the folds of my girdle. I was calm, because my will was strong; and I had the invincible courage of the warrior who has set fire to his vessel that he may hope alone for victory or death. All the inhabitants of Glandier were present in the dining-room-the dinner was long: the evening even longer. The affectionate manner of Madame Lafarge, and the attentive care of Madame Buffière, added to my sufferings. I tried to be amiable. I would have shown myself sensible of their kindness, during the last moments of our companionship. I was troubled and ashamed to return upon them so soon all the ill they had made me suffer during the three last days. Every time that I felt myself grow pale or weak-every time that the monotonous tone of the clock told me the dreaded hour drew nearer, I pressed the letter to my breast, and as I listened to the crackling of the paper, I seemed to hear it murmur, 'I watch: fear nothing.' Ten struck. M. Lafarge interrupted a business-conversation which had occupied all his attention for some hours, a conversation in patois, carried on more especially with his brother-in-law, but in which others of the family occasionally joined. I did not attempt to comprehend their strange idiom, but I could not avoid a profound feeling of sadness in listening to a tongue which was not that of the country. 'Come, let us to rest, my wife,' said M. Lafarge, drawing me by the waist along with him. 'Give me, I con

jure you, a few minutes to myself in my chamber,' I answered. Another whim!' he replied; but I yield to it, and for the last time.' I entered my chamber, summoned Clementine, and giving her the letter, begged her immediately to give it to M. Lafarge. At her return I drew the bolt, and cast myself sobbing in her arms. The good girl, dreadfully frightened, addressed a thousand questions to me; and I had scarcely strength to explain to her my despair, the letter I had written, and my resolution to leave the same evening. Clementine was terrified by this confidence, and supplicated me to endure all for a few days: to send for my family, and not expose myself to be killed by my husband in a moment of wrath. They struck loudly on the door: I refused to open it; and, kneeling by my bed, I wept. A more energetic summons restored my self-possession. I told Clementine to leave me alone-to open the door; and retired into the embrasure of a window which was open. M. Lafarge entered in a fearful state. He addressed to me the most outrageous reproaches; told me that I should not leave him; that he needed a wife; that he was not rich enough to purchase a mistress; that, lawfully his, I should be his in fact. He wished to approach and seize me. I told him coldly that if he touched me, I would leap from the window; that I recognised in him the power to kill, but not to pollute me. On seeing my paleness and energetic despair, he recoiled, and called his mother and sister, who were in the neighbouring chamber. They surrounded me, weeping; prayed me to pity their poor Charles, for the sake of their honour and their happiness, which I was about to destroy. M. Lafarge also cast himself at my knees; and my courage, firm enough to contend with injuries softened into tears at the voice of their sorrow and their prayers. I answered, that I could easily pardon the odious lie of which I had been the victim-that without regret I abandoned all my fortune-that I knew how to keep the name I had taken pure and honourable, but that I should never possess the courage to remain among them; that I wished to fly, and, if they detained me, I should know how to die."

Madame Lafarge sketches persons with whom she associated with graphic spirit, and frequently in a satirical vein. Take a speci

men :

"The sojourn of my aunt brought us acquainted with a pretty little female, who was married to M. C. G. She was a graceful white and red wax doll, opening and closing her eyes, saying papa and mamma; and even venturing, when the great resource of her intellect was pressed by her husband, to hazard a few very gentle and amiable phrases which had no pretension to meaning, but which exhibit the docility of the mechanical spouse. Never have I seen the fanatic lover of order reign so despotically as in that young wife. She wasted more time in arranging than in living. Madame G. had a delightful apartment; but no one must presume to step upon the carpet, to repose on the ottomans, or to turn over the leaves of one of her handsome gold and silk covered books. She covered all those luxuries with gauze and paper, passed her days in a dressing-room, seated in a straw-stuffed chair, and reading a few old school-books. Dancing

rumpled her light dresses; so she renounced dancing. Emotion was calculated to wrinkle her forehead, and banish the freshness from her cheek; so she drove from her all feeling and thought. In short, surrounded with all the enjoyments of life, she set her pride and felicity on preserving them from the pressure and ravages of time; and would have been perfectly happy if it had been possible for her to enclose in glass cases her husband and children."

To have done with the remarkable fortunes and doom of the writer of these Memoirs, we close their pages with a little more of variety, concerning her aunt, &c.; and lastly about the state of religion in Limousin:

"In person she was little, invariably shadowed by a huge green and yellow hat, as poetical as an omelette aux fines herbes. My aunt received me with two learned kisses, the most beautiful of all phrases, and said gravely to a sub-lieutenant of infantry of sixty, whom she held by the hand, Dearest, bow to this amiable niece, who comes into our deserts like the dove of the ark, bearing a branch of myrtle instead of a branch of olive. Panzani, my love, embrace your niece-she allows it—and then go and gather her a rose. He does not understand a word of French-he is a Corsican,' she said to me in a whisper; but if he speaks ill, he knows well how to love. Our marriage was quite a romance. He was dying with love for me, and my bewildered heart sacrificed on the altar of Hymen a life that I had determined on consecrating to the chaste sisters of Apollo.'

"Madame Panzani's castle was situated in a lovely position-the mountains of the Saillant-the meadows watered by the Vézère-the vineyards and rich corn-fields stretched out beneath the little terrace. The interior of the house displays an artistical disorder and originality. Books encumbered the tables and chairs: some dried on their learned leaves simples, champignons, and pears; fruits of every kind were confectioning in glass bottles; and the inkstand also fulfilled the function of a saltcellar. Under a portrait of Napoleon hung M. Panzani's martial shako, which, in its discreet lining concealed the false hair, curl papers, and pearl-powder of the female author. While the sabre, which was formerly used in combat with the Bedouin, served as a support for superb bunches of grapes and bunches of morella cherries. During the evening I passed at La Côte we had a dreadful storm. Madame Panzani, in affright, assembled her labourers around her, set them all praying on their knees, and commanded her little servant to sing, with all the strength of his lungs, the psalms of la pénitence; while she busied herself in counting her rosary, sometimes stopping to conceal her fear in the bosom of her old and unconcerned beloved one. When the thunder raged most heavily, the châtelaine would call to her little saboted groom-Baptistou, my darling! sing thy complainte d'Alger.' And then, turning towards her spouse, she murmured to him, ‘Then you were in all your glory, my duck; you forgot love.' If a flash called her back to her terrors, she would cry- Quick, Baptistou; sing your psalm again.' And Baptistou shouted saintly with the tempest; the

On

labourers prayed and the rosary passed through her fingers rapidly. the next day, when I was dressing, I took a decanter of water from the chimneypiece, drank a glass of it, and was about to use the rest in my ablutions, when Madame Panzani entered my chamber, and recoiled in affright. 'Oh, good God!' she cried, 'you have swallowed all my holy water. If it be an involuntary sacrilege, have mercy on us!' And while lamenting thus, she poured back her holy water piously into its saintly vessel."

"Religion in Limousin is but a compound of fanaticism and superstition. The clergy of the country parts appeared to me generally very ignorant and intolerant; the pulpit often becoming the echo of scandal, and the first stone being too often thrown by the shepherd of the flock himself. In the devotion of the women there is a total absence of juste milieu. Some sacrificing to the 'what will people say?' fulfil with as much negligence as coldness the form of their religious duties; while others, whom they call menettes, forget their household for the church, their husbands for their confessor, utter as many prayers as scandals, and if they give no alms to their suffering brethren, load with sweet confections their curé who suffers not. The churches are dirty and dilapidated; divine service is celebrated without calm or gravity; fasting and abstinence are preached to poor people who live on herbs and black bread; the vanity and dangers of the things of this world are denounced to poor wretches who possess not even the vanity of cleanliness, and who know nothing beyond their pigs, their fowls, and their privations. What a difference between such sermons and those of the simple-hearted curó of Villers-Hellon, who taught our peasants to assist and mutually love each other; to offer prayers amid their labours; and who said to the old men, Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven;' to the children, tell the truth, and honour your parents;' who taught families honesty, and young girls virtue. Superstition, all mighty amongst the Limousins, still exists in the middle ranks."

ART. XII.-An Account of Koonawur, in the Himalaya, &c. &c. &c. By the late Capt. ALEXANDER GERARD. Edited by GEORGE LLOYD. London: Madden.

CAPTAIN Alexander Gerard, and his brother Dr. J. G. Gerard, have been deservedly ranked amongst the most enterprising scientific travellers to whom Great Britain has given birth; both of them, alas! having sacrificed their lives in geographical pursuits. About a year ago we had the narratives of two journeys in the Himalaya, performed in 1817 and 1818, by the former, and to a great extent conjointly with the latter; and now we have the account of Koonawur, embracing other regions of the immense Himalaya range, which the captain had drawn out from his notes. The narratives which were before published appeared along with Major Sir William Lloyd's Journey, the whole forming two volumes.

It has therefore been deemed proper now to republish Captain Gerald's contribution to that work, in order that all his Observations in the Himalaya may be found in a complete and connected state. The volume after all is but a thin octavo, even with an Appendix consisting of Tables of Latitude, Barometrical Observations, and Notices of the Limits of Trees in the Himalaya. A large map accompanies the work, constructed, we are told, by Captain Gerard, and reduced from one on a much larger scale in the possession of his family, "which is a production worthy of his indefatigable zeal."

We have said that the volume after all is but a thin octavo; but it is multum in parvo. Unquestionably it will be regarded as a precious contribution to science, and to geographical knowledge. Every page of it exhibits enthusiasm, manly earnestness, and philosophical simplicity of character. There is an exactitude and good faith, together with a generous appreciation in all that is said of the tribes and races spoken of, that must endear the narratives to readers of every description. True, the contents are very frequently of a scientific nature. But even then the descriptions are so plain and straightforward, and the things described so wonderful or striking, that the feelings and imagination are carried irresistibly along, although the interest felt in the main purpose of the author may not be complete. Besides, there is in the Account of Koonawur a good deal that is of a popular nature, and to the merchant especially a considerable amount of useful information. The volume is truly a genuine production, whether its contents or the talents and the temperament of its author be contemplated. Our business now is to afford our readers an opportunity of tasting its quality, by presenting snatches gathered here and there.

The first section of the Account chiefly concerns the Lower Parts of Koonawur, also called Koorpa, being a tract of territory that is much secluded, and rugged and mountainous to an extraordinary degree. "It is terminated on the North and N.W. by mountains covered with perpetual snow, from 18,000 to 20,000 feet above the level of the sea, which separate it from Ludak, a large extent of country running along the banks of the Indus, from the vicinity of Garoo to the limits of Kashmer. A similar range of the Himalaya, almost equal in height, bounds it to the South; on the East it is divided from the elevated plains of Chinese Tartary by a lofty ridge through which are several high passes; and on the West lies Dusow, one of the divisions of Busehur." The area of Koonawur is calculated at 2100 square miles, and the population at no more than 4 to a square mile. The chains of snowy mountains, the inaccessible crags, and impenetrable forests, confine the inhabitants to the banks of the large streams, and comparatively few plains. These people were formerly under the dominion of a number of