The system of rural economy in the valleys of the high Pyrenees is described as differing little from that of the Alps,-man, as has been remarked, with reference to this very similitude, being every where the same, if in similar situations. The flour of maize or of buck wheat, and the GARBURE, a sort of vegetable, or rather cabbage soup, thickened with potatoes boiled to a paste, and seasoned with hog's lard or bacon, constitute the chief food of the Pyrenean peasant. These people are represented as quiet, and exhibiting the staid deportment of the Spaniards, rather than of the French, though they are the latter in their love of talking. It is of the people on the side of France that the writer speaks particularly, for she scarcely set foot on Spanish ground. She did touch a bit of Arragon, in a frontier visit, which resembled running from one great kingdom to another as it were through gaps in a partition wall; and she has given great effect to what was beheld and felt on these random and brief glimpses, causing us to regret that longer and more abundant opportunities were not vouchsafed to enable her to contrast and diversify her descriptions, by abundant notices of the Spanish versant of the Pyrenees.

Before closing these lightsome and elegant volumes, we must quote a few particulars from their pages, regarding that singular outcast tribe of human beings, the Cagots, respecting whom our authoress has been at pains to collect the best authenticated notices. These wretched and abused people, at one time, inhabited parts of Guienne, Britanny, Navarre, and the Pyrenees; and it is supposed that a small remnant of them may still exist among the latter mountains. But from time immemorial, and wherever dwelling, they have been the victims of the same dreadful and relentless persecution; for what supposed or actual crime, on the part of their ancestors, is not on record. Neither has it been put beyond a doubt from whom the Cagots are descended.

"Who were the cagots originally? and what was the terrible crime— perhaps misfortune, which put them under the ban? By what right were they cut off from all communication with their species, sold, bequeathed? walled out like lepers, forbidden to pray with other men, denied the rights of Christian sepulture? and yet, as it seems, for no evidence exists to the contrary, untainted by any contagious malady, and if ever rebels against the Christian faith, no longer so, but Catholics like their persecutors,

"The cagots were known to be Christians in the year 1000, as is proved by ancient writings mentioned by Marca, and there is every reason to suppose had long been so, even if they had ever been otherwise. Marca also refutes the idea (once general) of their being tainted with leprosy, quoting the opinion of certain learned physicians employed to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the imputation, and who pronounced them of healthy race, forte, vigoureuse, et pleine de santé."

when in the earlier periods of the middle ages we find them noticed as a race apart, an undesignated race, existing in a state of reprobation, the cause of which was, like their origin, involved in darkness. Were they, as Ramond supposes, a remnant of the Goths paled out from all communication with those who had been outraged by their cruelty? Were they Jews, or Arians, or Saracens fallen into the hands of their conquerors? There exists no record of their first coming; they did not appear at different, though not distant periods, like the tribe now known all over Europe by the various names of Bohemian, Tzingani, Zingari, Zinguener, Gitano, Cygana, or Gipsy: they had not, like that mysterious race, a language, a complexion, a physiognomy, obviously and entirely foreign and peculiar to themselves; they had no traditions, no remnants of ancient customs, nor has any record come down to us of the crime, whether against God or man, for which they have been so horribly punished.

"According to some old writers, the cagots were a tribe of Goths banished from Spain as an infected race, in which some terrible malady had become hereditary. Belleforét believes them to be the descendants of the Visigoths, defeated by Clovis in the terrible battle of Vouillé, when Alaric was slain and his army annihilated; and those who follow this opinion, derive the name of cagots from Caas Goths-Chiens de Goths. I have read, that in ancient acts they were called Chrétiens Gezetains, which name Marca supposes was given them from Gieza, a leper punished by the prophet Elisha for false dealing."

If any of the Cagots exist in the present day, they are very rarely seen in the Pyrenees, as our authoress intimates; and though no longer exposed to the barbarities that at one time pursued them, they are still strangers to the ordinary haunts of men. At one time they were even forbidden to enter a church where other men entered, or to go barefooted, lest the stones on which they trod should communicate infection to those classes who were supposed to be pure and untainted. Like the Pariah, to use the present writer's words, the Cagot "has still his home in the desert, where he dwells with others of his long-proscribed race. No other smoke mixes with that which rises from his humble cabin; no other hand presses his in amity. Debased by persecution, until the traces of his human nature have been nearly effaced from his pale and stupified countenance, and almost, if that countenance may be allowed to testify truly, from his mind also; condemned to perpetuate hereditary taints, hereditary deformities, created by persecution, and made innate by ages of misery, and by its concentration within its own limited channel, of that blood with which no other blood would mingle, it is no wonder that the Cagot should have become mentally and physically degraded below the common standard of humanity.'

This is a dreadful picture admirably delineated, to which may be added the sketch which the writer has borrowed from Ramond, who visited the Pyrenees in 1787,and wrote concerning this outcast race, something like compassion having by this time began to mingle with the feelings of horror which they had so long inspired.

"But this charitable sentiment had come too late to be of much comfort to these unhappy creatures. Goîtres, and the peculiar paleness and abasement of countenance which indicates the disposition to crétinism, or its existence, had, as I have already observed, become hereditary among them; and served to prolong that feeling of alienation which still existed, though in a less inveterate form, towards this outcast tribe. The small door through which alone they had been for ages permitted to enter a church, was, it is true, walled up; they might work, and buy, and be taken to their graves like other people; but no one would intermarry with them, and their dwellings were still apart from the habitations of other men. At present their existence seems altogether forgotten, indeed so entirely, that many consider the race as extinct; and all whom I have questioned on the subject have either been of that opinion, or at most answered doubtingly, with a vague idea that there might be still a remnant existing in some remote valley, but without any thing like certainty.

"Indeed, the subject has long ceased to excite either interest or curiosity, and yet it is well calculated to awaken both-curiosity, by the story of a people, of whose origin neither contemporary record or preserved tradition makes mention; a people publicly persecuted as if for some unimaginable crime, yet not a notice extant-written or remembered-of its nature or commission; and interest, by the fate of this same wretched caste-a bruised and trampled-on race of fellow-creatures, in whom even the brute abjectness, the utter abasement to which injustice had reduced them, could not extinguish the sentiment of affection, or weaken the power or permanence of those tender and domestic feelings which Ramond, who visited their huts, so touchingly and beautifully describes in a passage, often quoted; where, alluding to the dim retreats in which they were used to hide themselves, he saysJ'y ai trouvé des frères qui s'aimoient avec cette tendresse, qui est un besoin plus pressant chez les hommes isolés. J'y ai vu des femmes, dont l'amour avait quelque chose de soumis et de dévoué qu' inspirent la faiblesse et le malheur.' Poor wretches! how touching it is to see this first, last, sweetest feeling of the heart lingering still within it, when all other human ones have been nearly trampled out of their sanctuary. And what a lesson to those who curse Providence in the impious rage of disappointed vanity, is the cagot's patient maintenance of religious faith, his pious observance of religious duties, his unshaken trust in God's promises! For him the iron chain, which he has worn on earth, becomes a golden one, as joining itself to the links of hope, it graduates upwards until it ends in heaven!"

In dismissing these sweet and charming volumes, we have only farther to state that we hope and expect to meet with the beauties and excellencies of the same heart and pen again, in some field where the warmth and the power, here so manifest and predominant, may equally triumph.

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ART. IX.-Three Voyages in the Black Sea to the Coast of Circassia : including Descriptions of the Ports, and the Importance of their Trade: with Sketches of their Manners, Customs, Religion, &c. &c. By the Chev. Taitbout de Marigny, Consul of his Majesty the King of the Netherlands at Odessa. London: Murray. 1837.

SEVERAL circumstances concur to render the work now before us unusually interesting at the present time. In the first place, the country and the people described by the author, and the institutions, as well as the peculiar manners which characterize their history, have seldom been made the subject of minute details on the part of voyagers and travellers belonging to the enlightened nations of Europe. Again, the policy of Russia, with reference to Circassia, has been, for many years, of a piece with what that grasping power has long been in the habit of exercising towards neighbouring and weaker states; and the recent outrage committed on the commercial flag of England in a Circassian port by one of the northern autocrat's men of war, has carried to the highest pitch our national curiosity and anxiety with regard to some of the subjects which form the theme of the volume. There is, however, another circumstance connected with the work, that incidentally lends to it a still deeper importance, and renders it a far more significant index of deep-laid schemes of tyranny and inordinate ambition than its author can be supposed ever to have contemplated. By quoting from the introduction to the present translation, the fact and the evidence alluded to will be easily understood. "During the absence of M. de Marigny, the author of these Travels, from his post of Consul to the King of the Netherlands at Odessa, there issued last year, from the Russian press, a work under the following title (the Russian government finding that it was at length necessary to appear anxious to gratify the desire of the public for information about Circassia)'Voyages en Circassié, par le Chevalier Taitbout de Marigny, presentement Consul de S. M. le Roi des Pays Bas â Odessa, avec veus, costumes, &c. Librairies de D. Mieville, Editeur à Odessa et à â Siméphrophol,' 1836; and on the title-page the following note was appended in French :- These Travels having been printed at a distance from the author, the edition contains faults of every kind: the principal errors only have been noticed in the errata, which the reader is requested to correct before commencing the perusal of the work." "

But observe what the English translator has to add to this seemingly candid and anxiously corrective announcement. He says"Beneath the shelter of this equivocal apology, the Russian editor, acting under the censorship of the government, without which no work can appear in Russia, published the original notes of the VOL. II. (1837.) No. II.

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author, but omitted several important passages, and interpolated others dictated by the Russian authorities." Now these suppressions and additions, which are carefully marked in the edition before us (the necessary corrections having been forwarded to England, together with a copy of the Russian edition, in which the interpolations of the Russian authorities are marked), are neither few nor unimportant; often, indeed, wresting Marigny's meaning most grossly, and making him say what he never thought of saying.

Now, it is obvious, that much of the animus, and a sample of the practices of the Russian government, may be gathered from this single and simple disclosure; and that a fair and full account as regards the autocrat's policy, is amongst the last things that he and his servants can endure. In so far as England is concerned, however, the stratagem, and the vitiation of documents, in this instance, have been defeated; and, we hope, this fact will be the means of making the righteous consequences of such falsehood and baseness recoil upon their authors.

But independently of all these circumstances, the volume would at any time excite no small degree of notice in the public mind, both on account of the information which it contains, and the manner in which that information is conveyed. Extensive knowledge, careful research, a habit of nice observation, and impartial description, are characteristics of the work; the whole being easily and pleasantly detailed, and embracing a wide and varied extent of matter-not merely such as will prove attractive to the general reader, but that which will be particularly curious and useful in the eyes of naturalists, political economists, and merchants.

The first of Marigny's voyages was undertaken in 1818, with the view, it would seem, of extending and establishing certain commercial relations with the Circassians. But before entering into particulars of what came under his observation, and of what befel him, in the way of slight adventure, he gives certain general sketches of the country, as it appeared to him on his first visit, that conveniently serve as an introduction to the subsequent descriptions.

After an outline of Circassia, the soil is described as in general uncultivated, but everywhere good and fertile. To the north of the Caucasus, there are lovely plains watered by numerous rivers. But a great portion of the country is covered with immense forests, of the most magnificent timber which it is possible to behold.

On the coast, as well as in the deep valleys, the climate is hot; but in the plains, situated beyond the Caucasus, the air is sharper, and in winter the weather is rigorous.

The inhabitants of the Caucasus are at this moment a free population; yet, strange to say, they have preserved their primitive condition while surrounded by comparatively civilized nations. They are at present also united under a national standard, and muster