leasant surprise, as Pascal truly said, to find a man where
one expected to meet with an author; and M. Huc not only appears a very
good man, but shows himself a very clever one. The countries he has
visited are comparatively unknown, but are daily becoming more important
to us. Recent events have brought China within the sphere of our
interests, political and commercial; and her policy towards her Tartar
dependencies, and the nominally independent state of Thibet, are
beginning to excite attention in this part of the world. Those who have
studied the subject, will be deeply interested by M. Huc's narrative;
and the general reader must be amused by his graphic account of one of
the most arduous journeys ever effected. A few words will explain under
what circumstances it was undertaken.

At the beginning of the present century, the French missionary
establishment at Pekin, which had been at one time so flourishing, was
almost destroyed by successive persecutions, and the scattered members
of the little church, which had been founded at the cost of so many
perils, had taken refuge beyond the Great Wall, in the deserts of
Mongolia. There they contrived to live on the patches of land which the
Tartars allowed them to cultivate; and a few priests of the Lazarist
order were appointed to keep up the faith of the dispersed flock. MM.
Huc and Gabet were, in 1842, employed in visiting these Chinese
Christians, settled in Mongolia; and the acquaintance formed during
these visits with the wandering Tartar tribes inspired them with a great
desire to convert them to Christianity. Indeed, throughout these volumes
we trace an evident partiality to the Tartars as compared with the
Chinese; and they furnish a fresh instance of the invariable absence of
congeniality between Europeans of all nations and the natives of the
Celestial Empire.

The missionaries were hard at work, studying the dialects of Tartary,
when a circumstance occurred which gave their plans of proselytism a
more definite shape. The Papal See, with that magnificent contempt for
the realities of dominion which has ever distinguished it, and in
virtue, we suppose, of that undefined tenth point of the law which is
not involved in the word possession, appointed a Vicar Apostolic of
Mongolia. The pope might, with equal impunity, have divided it into
bishoprics--no meetings would have been hold to protest against the
usurpation; and the mandarins of Pekin would certainly have