FRENCH MISSIONARIES IN TARTARY AND THIBET.[12]
Few persons in England are aware of the amount of information which has been obtained through the medium of priestly literature in France; not to speak of the early Jesuit travellers, whose wonderful adventures first familiarized their readers with China and South America, and more than one of whom has been cleared, Herodotus-like, of the charge of exaggeration by the testimony of subsequent writers; not to speak even of those _Lettres édifiantes et curieuses_, which the Parisian wits and philosophers of the eighteenth century did not disdain to read, and which were merely extracts from missionary correspondence; a patient reader might even in the present day gather from publications of the same kind--_Les Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_ for example--many curious details respecting savage tribes and distant lands rarely visited by learned or worldly travellers. Unfortunately, such books are, for the most part, written in a style at once so wearisome and so full of religious affectation, that only a particular class of readers can digest them. The volumes before us--though recalling by their origin, and certain peculiar views of the writer, the class of works we have described--are very superior both in form and matter. We doubt if any publications, at once so diverting and so instructive, has appeared in France for a very long while. There is a vein of good humored raillery and natural fun running throughout them, which, joined to a total absence of book-making, carries one pleasantly on: to these are added good faith and earnestness of purpose, that command respect. It is always a pleasant 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.