mirable
character as that of the martyr-pastor, Louis Pascal, exhaling all his
soul in his last letter to his affianced Camilla Guarina: 'The love
which I bear you is increased by that which I bear to God, and as much
as I have been refined by the Christian religion, so much the more have
I been enabled to love you. Adieu. Console yourself in Jesus, and may
you be a pattern of his doctrines.' "There are few subjects," says the
reviewer, "more worthy the ambition of a writer, or that are more
inspiring, than the history of the martyred Vaudois, in the inaccessible
solitudes of the Alps, for some time protected by their obscurity, but
at last devoted for ages to the most cruel persecutions." The mystery of
the origin of this people, the drama of their destiny, the melancholy
interest which attaches itself to the different phases of their
existence, command in their favor the attention of the world, and
suffuse the pages of the historian with that sympathetic emotion so
easily communicated to the reader, and which is the very soul of
departed times.

* * * * *

AS WE learn from a recent number of the _Journal des Missions
Evangeliques_, a new work appeared in China toward the end of 1849,
under the title _Of the Geography and History of Foreign Nations_, by
SEU-KE-JU, the viceroy of the important province of Foh-kien. It is in
ten volumes, though the whole of them do not contain more matter than
one of our common school text books, and is accompanied by a map of the
world and several other maps. It has a preface by the Governor-General
of the province, in which he declares that it is better than all
previous geographical works in China, and recommends it to his
countrymen as perfectly worthy of confidence. The two first volumes are
occupied by a general introduction, in which Seu-ke-ju speaks of the
sources from which he has derived information, and of the many
difficulties he has had to contend with; he explains the use of maps,
gives the simplest ideas concerning the spherical form of the earth, and
expatiates on the difference of climates. Nothing can give a better idea
of the profound ignorance of the Chinese upon these subjects, and
nothing prove more decisively that they never can have possessed great
mathematicians and astronomers than such passages as the following:
"Formerly we were aware of the existence of an icy sea at the north
only, but had never heard that there was another a