the river-courses on every side of which they had formerly lwelt or encamped or roved, without ever dreaming of interference. But they were not doomed to remain long in uncertainty; Russian standards and Russian forts were soon to instruct them to whom they and their country belonged. In proportion to the rapidity of the course of acquisition by which a great number of territories and states had been thus put in doubt, and thus brought to certainty, the condition of the surrounding regions, to an undefinable distance, was becoming dubious; and the people might well begin to feel as if the Russian boundary line were already hovering in the air over the land of their fathers, just ready to attach upon and appropriate it. This irresistible extension has been going on without cessation, till at length this power is, upon a line of many thousands of miles, in formidable contiguity, and with a boundary quite as impatiently moveable as ever, to divers tracts, kingdoms, and empires, the people of which, a few generations back, heard of Russia as a distant obscure state, striving in a rude and inartificial manner, to raise itself into some importance. No prognosticator of the fortunes of States dares draw on the map in advance beyond the present certain or unsettled confine of this empire, the line which shall not be lost within the confine twenty years hence,

In the mean time, it is perfectly proper and laudable, that while this vast process of acquisition is advancing unintermittingly, there should be in as constant operation a system of exploring and describing, by divisions, the almost immeasurable territory comprehended in the empire, of which far more than a million of square miles is ground nearly as little known by the grand Proprietary, as that at the centre of Africa. This circumstance, of so much of his enormous estate being terra incognita, plainly dictates the first object for the investigators, as geographical, in the simplest sense. There is required a description of the surface of the countries, in the most obvious natural features, with a moderately accurate account of the extent of the respective tracts as limited by natural or artificial divisions. The geographical missionaries may be required to bring some general account of the people; (where there are any;) of their probable number; of what is most prominent in their polity and habits; and of the most palpable differences in the several tribes. But surely they are loaded with too much duty, if they are required also to perform the functions of naturalists, and antiquaries, and philologists. We therefore could not help feeling some degree of commiseration for the Author of the present volume, on looking at the most onerous, the encyclopædic extent of his commission, as laid down in a tremendous roll of instructions. It would really seem that he was required to learn every thing that was knowable; and, in order not to VOL. V. N.S. Dd

fail of this, to inquire about a multitude of things that cannot be known. He might well have asked whether he might hold his duty to comport with any such idle luxuries as eating and sleeping; or whether it might be allowed to any one of his five senses to enjoy a brief holyday, on condition that all the rest were busily employed. We are, fortunately, not put under an obligation to know, or even to guess, whether this imposition of twenty ordinary men's duty upon the faculties of one, was owing to a general principle of thrift in the autocratical authority; or whether the cost of conquering so many regions had reduced the treasury too low to afford the fitting out of a competent number of persons to survey them; or whether qualified men for such a service were too scarce; or whether the Imperial Director assumed that his agents must necessarily, by virtue of their appointment, have a width and power of faculty corresponding to the enormity of his empire.

After beholding the bulky code of instructions prepared for the traveller, by the accumulated suggestions of both knowledge and inquisitive ignorance, we cannot enough admire the calm philosophy with which he takes up and bears his fardel.' He never for a moment questioned that every thing which invention could accumulate to enjoin upon him, became a part of his duty thenceforth. And his obedience has been exemplary: his book proves that he never forgot his business. It brings together a large quantity of matters of information; a good portion of them adapted to general interest, very many of them of no use but to the Russian geographer, and some which can interest none but the very few persons who, through some lusus of destiny, have been inveigled into the study of the barbarian dialects of Tartary.

One thing that weighs heavily against the book, as it must against any work descriptive of the same regions, is the perfectly hideous nomenclature of places and tribes. Nothing surpassing it could have been accomplished, one thinks, by the most earnest labours, stimulated by the highest premiums, of an academy instituted on purpose for the business, as Southey has it, of ugliography. It is evident that the ancestors of these Caucasians, must have gone off from Babel with the worst refuse and drainings thrown off by all the languages, as they respectively grew into form and consistence.

We have already intimated, that a very considerable portion of the volume is of a nature to be entirely indigestible to most readers in England. More than a third part of it, we suspect, may come under this description. Perhaps, excepting reviewers, there is hardly one reader that will not, in spite of his best resolutions, have acquired, before he has got through a hundred pages of the book, the habit of catching signs of lieense to pass over paragraphs, with little better than a guess at

what they contain ;-paragraphs headed, perhaps, by some absolutely ineffable name of a district of bog, or sand, or snow, occupied by a very few scores of people, and doomed, as we should hope, to be in better times deserted by whatever living thing can be grateful for the smiles of nature. The paragraph perhaps will state, that the diminutive inhabiting tribe, or section of a tribe, with a denomination quite as insuperable as that of its habitat, has the same customs as another previously mentioned section of the same tribe. The reader involuntarily learns to perceive at a glance, that page after page contains nothing that can by any possibility turn to account in his little stock of knowledge, even were there the smallest chance, which there is not, that these minutiæ of a barbarous topography and statistics would stay in his memory.

If a portion of these details, so wholly devoid of interest, and causing the reader, if that he does read,' down-right a waste of time, could not with propriety have been omitted in the translation, we think that at least he ought to have been somewhat spared in the pecuniary part of the account, and have obtained the book at a far less exorbitant price-unless indeed it is meant chiefly for statesmen, who can, to be sure, best afford to pay a high price for knowledge-or it is not the fault of those who pay them.

For whose benefit soever, among us, this mass of obscure topography is intended, it must be nearly useless to every one, without a good map on a large scale; and no map at all is given. Whether there is one in the original work, or whether there is to be one accompanying the sequel, (for it is only of the first part that this volume is a translation,) we know not. But it is obvious that without such aid much of the distributive local description might as well have been printed in the most barbarous of the dialects of the regions described.

There are several rather lengthened pieces of history, which cannot exactly be said to be out of place, that manifest, if accurate, a laudable industry in the examination of records, which will claim to be repeated in whatever shall profess to be a complete history of the Russian Empire, but which nevertheless must be inconceivably uninteresting to English readers. With the exception of any one among us, if such a one there be, who may be planning the hopeless task of such a history, it is impossible for us to dilate our intellectual being to the extent of taking an inquisitive concern in the innumerable petty movements and sanguinary quarrels of a multitude of barbarous chieftains, whose plundering inroads or stupid resentments have, at various points and times, provoked or invited the almost equally barbarous Russian commanders, to make those visits so excellently turned to permanent account by the Russian policy,

which has conferred the favour of its imperial occupancy very impartially on friends and on foes.

We soon perceived, on inspecting this volume, that our task could not be that of attempting any regular abstract. Indeed, after these slight general notices, we shall content ourselves with transcribing a few passages from different parts of the book, which, notwithstanding the dreary quality of such considerable tracts of it, does nevertheless contain a good share of what is interesting. Of this nature are some of the passages descriptive of scenery and natural phenomena; but still more so is the account of the manners of the principal of the wild races of human beings, the Circassians, or, as we are required to write and call thein, Tscherkessians, the Ingusches, and the Mongols, a race which holds a scattered existence over a vast extent of northern Asia, from the neighbourhood of the Black Sea to the northern frontier of China, of which empire a portion of them are subjects, while the Calmucks, a tribe of the Mongols, are within the southern sweep of the Russian dominion.

Of the economy of this nation, in their civil, moral, and religious habits, the Author gives an extended and elaborate exhibition, made, he affirms, on the best authority. Their religion occupies a very conspicuous place in the representation. It is that of the Lamas; in other words, that of Buddha or Fo; which is the religion of Tibet and of China. Many parts of the frivolous and endless ritual, as observed by the Mongols, are recounted, and with all imaginable seriousness on the part of the philosophic describer. If the representation is accurate, it would appear that the worshippers of Buddha have not much to boast, on the score of liberty or rationality, over those of the Hindoo triad. The system is mainly composed of ridiculous trifles, and every concern of life almost is implicated with them. It is marvellous it should have been possible for a race so irregular and excursive, to become subjected to so punctilious and insatiable a ceremonial.

But there is nothing in which the human mind has manifested more ingenuity, than in relieving itself under the exactions of conscience, by contrivances for the abridgement and facilitation of duty. One of the most admirable things of this kind in the whole world, has been fallen upon by these over-tasked barbarians. The device in question may be denominated a praying machine, or a prayer-wheel, or a prayer-mill.

Among the most remarkable of the sacred utensils of the temples, is the Kürda, a cylindrical vessel of wood or metal, either very small or of immense size. In its centre is fixed an iron axle; but the interior of the cylinder, which is quite hollow, is filled with sacred writings, the leaves of which are all stuck one to another at the edge, throughout the whole length. This paper is rolled tightly round the axis of the cylinder, till the whole space is filled up. A close cover

is fixed on at each end, and the whole Kürdä is very neatly finished, painted on the outside with allegorical representations, or Indian prayers, and varnished. This cylinder is fastened upright in a frame by the axis; so that the latter, by means of a wheel attached to it below, may be set a-going with a string; and with a slight pull kept in a constant rotatory motion. When this cylinder is large, another, twice as small, and filled with writing, is fixed for ornament on the top of it. The inscriptions on such prayer-wheels commonly consist of masses for souls, psalms, and the six great general litanies, in which the most moving petitions are presented for the welfare of all creatures. The text they sometimes repeat a hundred or even a thousand times, attributing from superstition a proportionably augmented effect to this repetition, and believing that by these frequent copies, combined with their thousands of revolutions, they will prove so much the more efficacious. You frequently see, as well on the habitations of the priests as on the whole roof of the temple, small Kürdä placed close to each other, in rows, by way of ornament; and not only over the gate, but likewise in the fields, frames set up expressly for these praying machines, which, instead of being moved by a string, are turned by means of four sails, (shaped and hollowed out like spoons) by the wind.

⚫ Other similar Kürdä are fastened to sticks of moderate thickness; a leaden weight is then fastened to the cylinder by a string, which, when it is once set a-going, keeps it with the help of the stick, in constant motion. Such-like prayer-wheels, neatly wrought, are fastened upon short sticks to a small wooden pedestal, and stand upon the altars for the use of pious persons. While the prayer-wheel is thus turned round with one hand, the devotee takes the rosary in the other, and at the same time repeats penitential psalms.

A fourth kind of these Kürda is constructed on the same principle as those which are turned by wind; only it is somewhat smaller, and the frame is adapted to be hung up by a cord in the chimneys of the habitations or huts of the Mongols. When there is a good fire, they are likewise set in motion by the smoke and the current of air, and continue to turn round as long as the fire is kept up.

A fifth kind of Kürdä is erected on a small stream of water, upon a foundation like that of a mill, over which a small house is built to protect it from the weather. By means of the wheel attached to it, and the current, the cylinder is in like manner kept in a constant circalar motion. These water-Kürdä are commonly constructed on a large scale, and maintained at the joint expense of the inhabitants of a whole district. They have a reference to all aquatic animals, whether alive or dead, whose temporal and eternal happiness is the aim of the writings contained in them: in like manner as the object of the fire-Kürdä is the salvation of all animals suffering by fire.'

The other parts of the apparatus of the superstition, are numerous and diversified. A very important and valued portion of it consists in the books. All the works of India and Tibet,' says our Author, are not only translated in the Mongol language, but likewise cut in the neatest manner in wood, and