will of their form of religious worship,) that legal processes are unknown among them, and criminals but rare, and that all landed proprietors wish for them and prefer them as tenants; they give also, quietly and without opposition, to God what they think is due to God, and to Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar."

Among the young persons whom he found collected from distant countries, for the purpose of being educated as missionaries, he saw some from Labrador, Otaheite, Africa, Greenland, &c. He endeavoured to find out whether the maladie du pays existed strongly amongst them, but found that

"The Greenlander alone, who was indeed the least charming in appearance, spoke in a longing manner of her Fatherland."

In order to reconcile the extreme inconsistency that will strike the reader as existing between this testimony to the excellence of the Moravians as a religious community, and the absurd extracts that the author has chosen as a specimen of their religious offices, we must say a few words in explanation. In the ninth century Christianity was introduced into Bohemia, from Greece, and the professors of it maintained a long but somewhat fruitless contest with the Papacy, upon the subject of free access to the scriptures, which, however, prepared the way for the introduction of the doctrines preached by Wickliffe and gave to the reformed religion in Huss, the first, and in Jerome, the most illustrious of its martyrs. A long and melancholy history of war and persecution, followed, and the professors of the reformed faith were more hardly dealt with, and more nearly exterminated there than in any other part of the world. Those who escaped were compelled to emigrate, and establish them selves in different parts of Europe, where their doctrines were tolerated. A large community of their brethren applied, through their pastor, to Count Zinzendorf, a Saxon nobleman, for permission to establish themselves upon his estate at Bertholsdorf, in Lusatia; and this being granted, fixed upon a piece of ground called Hutberg, or Watch-hill, on the high road to Zittau. Here, with their own hands, they

erected a village, and called it Herrnhut, or the Watch of the Lord; and from thence comes their well-known appellation. Here they were soon joined by Count Zinzendor, who took upon himself the government of the settlement, and so many emigrants joined them, that their numbers soon became very considerable. A code of rules was drawn up, by which they were all bound, and among which the most remarkable provided for the education of the children apart from their parents; and the marrying of young people, not according to inclination, but according to the choice of the elders, supposed to be chiefly influenced by the direction of the Almighty.

"To this part of their discipline," says Southey, in his life of Wesley," and not to any depravity of manners, that fanatical language of the Moravians may be distinctly traced, which exposed them at one time to so much obloquy, and which in any other age would most certainly have drawn upon them a fiery persecution, with every appearance of justice. Love, in its ideal sense, could have no more existence among such a people than among the Chinese, where a husband never sees the wife for whom he has bargained until she is sent home to him in a box; but when the Count Zinzendorf and the founders of his Moravian church had stript away the beautiful imaginative garment, they found it expedient to provide fig-leaves for naked nature; and Machiels never gave birth to combinations of more monstrous and blasphemous obscenity, than they did in their fantastic allegories and spiritualization. . . Fortunately for themselves and for that part of the heathen world among whom they have laboured, and still are labouring with exemplary devotion, the Moravians were taught by their assailants to correct this perilous error in time. They were an innocent people, and could with serenity oppose the testimony of their lives to the tremendous charges which, upon the authority of their own writings, were brought against them. And then, first, seeing the offensiveness, if not the danger, of the loathsome and impious extravagancies into which they had been betrayed, they corrected their books and their language; and from that time they have contrived to be not merely without reproach, but to enjoy, in a greater degree than any other sect, the general good opinion of every other religious community."

Surely, then, that author is strongly to be blamed who rakes up these abominations in giving an account of the present condition of this estimable community.

His return to the home of his childhood, leads him into many interesting reflections upon the political changes which have taken place in Lusatia ; and we shall endeavour to follow him

through some of these, not only because the author appears in a more favourable point of view as a politician than as a theologist, but because so many of his observations apply with peculiar force to those changes which are at present taking place in our own country. He introduces the subject by describing the workings of his own imagination while in the sober twilight he sat among the tombs of his fathers, and looked down upon his broad hereditary possessions. His vivid imagination conjured up visions of the past and future; and in describing the scenes of burial as they passed before him in chronological order from the earliest ages, he has traced admirably the progress from free, wild, savage life to civilization; and from civilization again to that worse than savage, material, mechanical state of society into which the spread of cold utilitarian doctrines would appear to be hastening

us.

When the light and colouring of imagination shall have vanished from the earth, and only dull, tangible forms remain, to be measured and judged of by the compass and rule of those who deem the highest right of man to be a sufficiency of food and clothing, and the object of mind to transmute all things into what is food for the body, the watchwords of whose politics are freedom and equality. words which convey ideas singularly captivating to the restless, seeking mind of man, but which lose their power of charming when considered in opposition to the whole framework of creation, which is connected by a system of mutual dependence and unequal power.

You," says the author, "seek and strive after freedom and equality, and think that all you want: oh! rather seek after freedom and love. That wild striving after equality that can never be satisfied here below, because God has not so willed it, is a second eating of the

apple that shall deprive us of all that remains of Paradise. In the commencement of your search after it, you may possibly effect some good. Soon there will be no longer any slave or slave-master, absolute monarch, or people submitted led to the slaughter, aristocracy surroundto his caprice, arrogant conqueror, or army ed with pomp, or beggar prostrate at the feet of the rich, fearful hierarchy, or persecuted heretic; and thus certainly less bitter sorrow, but, perhaps, less enjoyment. How many noble lights will take their departure along with these shadows; and

much I fear that all the virtues connected

with love, such as voluntary self-denial, humility, sacrifice, childish obedience, unselfish constancy to death, generosity, the delicate sense of honour, will all wither away upon the hard soil of freedom and equality, and only to make room for strict right and rigid egoism. There will then be no more lovers or friends, but only companions, according to circumstances united by contract, either for the purpose of carrying on business, or the propagation of the species. In place of honouring our parents, we shall only honour the police; instead of kings, we shall have only presidents; instead of an army, we shall have a militia; instead of servants, hirelings; and finally, instead of the great God, a constitutional ruler of the world in abstract. Poetry and art, pomp and luxury, will be in the same manner absorbed in sober, vulgar utility; every one will have just what is necessary, and no one abundance; ambition will no longer vex us, when there will be nothing will be no brilliant object to contend for, envy another the possession of; there no temple of fame, no height to ascend, for then home-brewed poverty will be all that we may hope to win-in a word, no burning colours will then shed their hues over life; grey will be the warp, and grey

to

the woof that the Future will be permitted to weave in the noisy loom of Time. May success attend it; but willingly would I depart before, with my own old many-coloured world, as the Catholic would rather rest under the dim and glimmering gem-bedecked window of his ornamented cathedral, than in the light and glaring church of the reformers."

Having thus expressed his opinion of the utilitarian principles which appear to actuate those enthusiastic reformers, who are so busy in all parts of the world, he proceeds to detail some of the immediate inconveniences which

his own country is at present suffering under in the cause of improvement, The object of the government appears to be to change the present feudal tenure under which the peasant holds his land, in consideration of part service and part rent, into a tenure similar to ours, and to force the enclosure of farms. With this view

"A number of new offices were created, under the title of a general commission, for the purpose of exchanging and altering the tenures by which the peasantry hold their land; and a host of economy commissioners, (for the most part bankrupt proprietors or tenants, discharged servants, surveyors, &c.) were let loose upon districts that were already too poor, and whose inhabitants were thus plunged into immense expense and trouble.

"We have seen instances where property has been thus regulated, and where the cost of regulation, even before the transaction was concluded, had exceeded the whole amount of indemnification, so that the proprietor lost not only the service and fealty of his peasant, but was also obliged to pay money in addition." "The cost of the regulation is, to the proprietor, at least 75 per cent. upon the highest value of his property."

"In all the districts in which the regulation has taken place, the peasants have lost the half or a third part of their land, and also their horses, with which before they did their feudal service first, and then hired them to their landlords for the remainder of the time he required them. They part with their horses, which they cannot any longer feed upon their own ground, and become what may be called little farmers they have no opportunity of reaching to any more extended means of industry; but they, with wife and child, and some couple of cows, work at and manure their little field, and are contented when not actually suffering from hunger; a state not even always to be calculated upon under the present circumstances; and yet much less are they able to meet the government taxes, with respect to which they are in enormous arrear."

These extracts are sufficient to show that we are not the only people that are suffering from over-legislation, from the spirit of centralising and simplifying government, which has proved so injurious to France, and with which our rulers appear to be so deeply

imbued, while withdrawing confidence and power from the natural guardians of the state and depositories of authority over the people, and investing one immense body of hireling police with all the power, without the responsibility; which was possessed by so many beautifully graduated classes in our old and proven constitution. His next subject of discussion is the emancipation of the slaves, which he does in a most rational and temperate manner, and concludes by observing that he fears

"The emancipation of the slaves, which is about to be carried into effect in England, promises but little good-even as little as the application of constitutional principles of government to Spain and Portugal. In such states the remedy must originate within, and not be applied from without."

It would be well if this principle were generally kept in view by those who benevolently aim at bettering the condition of the lower classes in this country, and who often turn in despair from the irksome and disappointing endeavour of forcing improvement from without, while the precaution of beginning from within, and making the people sensible of their wants, before these wants are supplied, might have guaranteed success. The mere doing for people what they ought to do for themselves, is like laying, with a pencil, the artificial hue of health upon features wasted by disease-the appearance may, for a while, deceive, but the condition, alas, remains the same.

In the latter part of the second volume he introduces to our acquaintance a very interesting character, whom he met with at Leipsic, and of whom we shall extract some account; as, when he publishes his travels, they will, probably, be among the most interesting that have yet been written.

"He is a captain in the French guards, Doctor, Emir, Chan, Alcibiades Tavernier, nephew of the great tra veller of that name, and by far a greater traveller than he was; having been severely wounded in the revo lution, and not restored to his former situation until the time when France gave up the ghost, (I mean Napoleon,) Monsieur Tavernier contemptuously refused to return into the military service, and followed his natural inclina

tion-which is always the safest guide to men of talent in leading them into their proper sphere of action-in commencing a diligent study of medicine and surgery-a pursuit which he determined to follow for the future.

"When he had completed his studies, he began his extensive travels into Africa and Asia, particularly into Egypt and Abyssinia, Syria, Arabia, Persia, the ancient territory of the Great Mogul, Armenia, and what is by far the most interesting part, into the

enormous and almost unknown centre of Asia, as far as the Chinese wall. From thence he travelled through Chinese Tartary, as far as Kiachta, and returned to Europe by the new Russian and Siberian military road, where he was unfortunate enough to meet with shipwreck, as it were, in the very sight of his harbour; that is to say, at the very gates of Bucharest, where he lives at present: he was seized upon by robbers, deprived of a great part of his property, collections, and papers, and left for dead, together with his son, who, although only ten years old, had seized a gun that lay in the carriage, and shot the leader of the robbers. Having received ten wounds his recovery was tedious and difficult.

"The remarkable and almost verging on the marvellous details of this journey, exceed in variety, the most interesting of romances, while they promise to add much to the increase of science. At one time we find the hero like Marco Polo, a favourite and minister of some mighty Tartar Prince, and even exalted himself to the rank of princes; at another time giving himself up to a romantic passion for the brightest ornament of the seraglio of his new lord, pursuing it through the greatest dangers and at last crowned with success. Now commanding an army, and giving battle, then again appearing as the leader of the wild hordes, in which character he discovered the original breed of horses in the very centre of Asia, which will probably prove superior to the Arabian, and discovered a new mode of drawing down lightning from heaven, which appears likely to throw into the shade the former one of Franklin.

"But as we shall soon see the details of this extraordinary adventure in his own work, I shall content myself with

giving here a brief notice of Monsieur Tavernier, (principally with a view of calling attention to his work,) to which I shall add two of his least important stories, which, from having a good memory and also from having taken notes at the time, I think I can give tolerably accurately, and in doing so I

am not afraid of taking anything away from the interest which a further acquaintance with the author will create.

THE BEAR HUNT.

There was a bear,' said our Alcibiades, 'that on account of his unheardof size and colossal strength, had become the terror of all the inhabitants between Bucharest and Cempino, near the Carpatho-Romano-Moldavian mountains: the monster frequented the boundless forest of Poentar, which crosses a part of the road from Bucharest to Kronstadt in Transylvania. For from eight to ten years this enormous brute was well known to the peasants, whom he had robbed of about four hundred oxen,beside other domestic animals. No man dare close with him : a universal panic appears to have seized upon the country people. The last exploit that was reported of him, and which excited the attention of the principal divan of the country was the following:

'A large caravan of wine was making its tedious journey across the mountains towards Bucharest; the people, as is usual there, halted in the heat of the mid-day, and unharnessed their oxen, to let them graze in the wood along the road side. Soon a terrible noise was heard-those who were nearest to it ran to see what was the matter, and saw among the buffaloes an enormous brute, something like them, only black, and far larger, which had seized upon one of them and laid it across his back, where he held it fast, as with an iron grasp, in spite of the fearful struggle of the agonized animal, and walked away with his prey upon his hind legs. This report, in appearance, so fabulous, awakened the interest of not only the government but also the greatest lovers of the chase in Bucharest, namely, the Bojar Kostaki, Kornesko, Manoulaki Floresko, the Bey-Zadey Soutzo, and your humble servant. A great chase was proposed, and planned