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THOMSON'S TRAVELS IN TIBET. Western Hima...
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We should do our utmost to encourage the...
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IV. December 5, 1851. < §p|®LENA bella,—...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Novels Foe, Novel Readers Constance Tyrr...
you have played your part in this little comedy . I only wish Captain Mowbray could bave seen you ; how he would have laughed , ' and here she again relapsed into a violent fit of laughter , upon which Mason rushed out of the room , seeing that the case was evidently hopeless , and stung to madness by the last taunt , which showed him how the image of Mowbray was impressed upon her mind , and suggested that he might have been partly instrumental ih procuring him this defeat . " 'It is then all at end , ' said he to himself , as quitting the house he strode hastily across the park . ' The toil , the care of so many years , is utterly thrown away ; and as if these were not enough—as if the disappointment of hope , so long cherished , were not sufficiently bitter—she has added insult to my mortification . If she must have refused me , she might surely have done so kindly and tenderly .
She does not suspect that my views had reference only to her fortune ; for aught she knew , I might have felt the love I feigned . Surely then , it was inexcusable of her to turn it thus into ridicule . But , by heaven ! I will be revenged : she shall not be able to boast that she can insult me with impunity . No , I will leave no stone unturned , no plan untried , until I have devised means of making her bitterly repent the day when she heaped insult on the head of James Mason . '" To protest against the fearful untruth of such a scene as this would be idle ; the whole book exhibits a complete misapprehension of realities . Young girls laugh in the faces of suitors in novels , but no girl does sueh a thing in life ; unless , indeed , there be some impertinence to justify it , by betraying a want of real feeling in the suitor .
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Thomson's Travels In Tibet. Western Hima...
THOMSON'S TRAVELS IN TIBET . Western Himalaya and Tibet ; a Narrative of a Journey through the Mountains of Northern India during the years 1847-8 . By Thomas Thomson , M . D Reeve and Co . This work should have been named , " Botanical Memoranda , made during a journey , & c . ; " and by that name have prevented the serious disappointment of every candid reader who , believing in its title , will expect a book of travels . Dr . Thomson is a careful and apparently trustworthy man , his memoranda , therefore , would have earned their meed of praise . All genuine observation is useful ; and we presume that botanists will make
some use of Dr . Thomson ' s book . But the general reader will pronounce it one of the dullest of dull books . Every one remembers the wearisome iteration of the historian of the great Retreat , and his minuteness in specify ing the number of parasangs the army marched each day , till one began to think that the incessantly recurring phrase , _evrevOev _e £ e \ avvet € rra $ pov 9 8 vo _n-apaaayyas _Scica , k . t . A ., must have been written with an eye to a land-surveyorship ; but tiresome as these details are , they are at least definite , whereas Dr . Thomson ' s incessantly recurring phrases , " the ascent was steep , " the " descent was rugged "—and the vague descriptions of the road , are not only wearisome , but convey no definite information . The one good remark of this kind we noticed was the following : —
" It is not easy to convey an idea in words of the mode in which these mountains are arranged , unless it is recollected that it is an universal rule that all mountains are ramifications of an axis , giving off branches on both sides , and that each branch is again divided in a similar manner , till the ultimate divisions are arrived at . All mountainous districts are in this respect similar to one another , and differ principally in the proportion borne by tbe altitude to the superficial extent of the ranges of which they are composed . "
But for the rest , his itinerary notes are as useless as they are tedious . They are written b y a man who is " nothing if not botanical . " Scenes are to him interesting only as they enrich his herbarium . The romance of the Indus is shut up in the Caragana or the Pinus excelsa . The Indian races interest him not , but he is in raptures with the oxybaphus Jlimalayanus . Altogether , man seems regarded in this work as a " cultivating animal "—a biped having the tendency to grow crops and cultivate gardens . The whole spirit of the book "' is summed , up in this extract : —
" We encamped at Lara , a village nine miles from Dankar , at which there were only two poplar trees , and a very small extent of arable ground . The wheat was ripe and very luxuriant , the cars being large and well filled . " The poplar trees , and tho full-eared wheat , were what ho saw at other p laces besides Lara . Thc botanist , as before hinted , may gather something from this minute record , but only the botanist in the most exclusive sense . The general reader may love flowers with the passion of a Dutchman for tulips , and not gather much entertainment here . Ho will toil through chapter after chapter hoping to meet with an interesting page , which ho meets with just often enough not to make him _£ » ive up in despair ; but when the volume is closed he will find that he has learned little , and been amused less .
In trying to get an extract or two from its pages wo havo been even more struck with its continuous _dulness . Here is one which may interest the reader who lias been tramping through ploughed fields all day , and has returned home hoarse with shouting " down charge" to a volatile pointer : — " About the same time , I was invited by the Tbannadar of Iskardo to be present at a hunting party , which he bad arranged for tbe capture of tbe e . hakor , or puintcd partridge , by surrounding a spot of ground , in which these birds are numerous , with a ring of * men , who , approaching from all directions , gradually form a dense circle of perhaps a hundred yards in diameter . When the partridges are disturbed by a horseman in this enclosure , they naturally iiy towards the living wall by which
they are surrounded . Loud shouts , and tbe beating of drums and waving of caps and clonks , turn them back , und they are driven from side to side , till at lust , exhausted with fatigue , and stupid from the noise and confusion , they sink to the ground , ami allow themselves to be caught by hand . The scene was u very striking one . The spot selected was a deep dell , full of rocks , but without treeH . The sport , however , did not seem so successful as uHual , six or eight birds only being captured . Tbe _cbakor is an extremely common bird in all purls of tbe valley of tbe liidiiN , » nd indeed throughout Tibet . In winter , when the bills me covered with snow , they are to be found in great numbers close to the river , even in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages ; and in general , when approached , tbey lie very close umong the crevices of the stones . "
Dr . Thomson ' s qualities as a writer of travels may be gathered from thiB account of Kashmir and its valley : — " On tlm morning of tho JS 2 ud of April , after following tho hum of the low hilla
Thomson's Travels In Tibet. Western Hima...
for half a mile , till the last projecting point had been rounded , I entered « , of Kashmir . This " celebrated valley" did not at all come up to the emt _^ which I had formed from previous descri ptions , and from the _appearand _* p termination of the valley of the Sind river . The first impression was one f the siderable disappointment . It was by no means well wooded , and the centre f f ?" valley along the river , being very low , had an unpleasant swampy appearance tk road to the town , which is about ten mile 3 from Ganderbal , led over an el * platform . There were several villages , and p lane , willow , and fruit-tree _- scattered here and there , though far from abundantl y . The platform _l _^
_» s-tv _«* -i _«^ n 1 _«/ _xrTO « or 1 « riTi 4- V » O _nnitTlDT . f \ T _CTTPAATl HAW _QY \ QYirwlArl «» _-itJ-1 _~ * -1 _~ _ _^** _'H general covered with a carpet of green , now spangled with myriads of dander and other spring flowers . The mountains on the left , which at first were very J gradually rose in elevation , and were throughout rugged and bare . As I appro _h _* _* the town I mounted an elephant , which formed a part of the _corte ge sent ad ing to the usual oriental etiquette , to receive an expected visitor ; and ' i quently saw the town to much better advantage than I should have done l Tu " ridden through it on my little Ladak pony . Passing completely through tbe ' i I was conducted to the Sheikh Bagh , a garden on the banks of the Jelam _aiT _' _f * eastern extremity , in a pavilion in the centre of which I took up my quarters 8
" The town of Kashmir is apparently of great extent , and seems very den 1 populated . Its length is much greater than its width , as it is hemmed in bet _^ _T _^ the Jelam on the south and a lake on the north . The principal part of the t _^ is on the north side of the Jelam , but a large suburb occupies the opposite ba _t surrounding the Sher-Garhi , or fortified palace of the ruler of the country Th ' streets are in general so narrow , that there are but few through which an elenha t can pass ; and the houses , which have mostly several stories , are built with wooden frame-work , the lower story of stone and tliose above of brick . There ar
no buildings of any great note ; and the elaborate account of Moorcroft renders if unnecessary to enter into any detail . The river is crossed by many bridges ill built of deodar-wood . "
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We Should Do Our Utmost To Encourage The...
We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourage itself . —Goethe . "
Iv. December 5, 1851. < §P|®Lena Bella,—...
IV . December 5 , 1851 . < _§ _p _|® LENA bella , —Shall I apologise for the meagreness of my two _IHk ? lastnotes _? I can imagine your face when you opened the last , i » H _^ saw _^ _^ bulk of it was not in the h an dwriting of your _^^ vassal—I can see your proud flush , and impatient look round at Giorgio , —as if he could help it ! But I kiss your white hand , and am forgiven—as well as Giorgio , guilty of standing by while you opened the insulting meagreness . I know you would make me feel the vis vita in your beloved fingers for calling your hand white ; but I will maintain
against Europe , on the bridge across the river , that your hands are exquisitely white—under the brown . Talking of white hands , Yseult—I mean the living Yseult here in London —must have been so named after the whiteness of her hands—for that is something wonderful ; the more so since they are not white , in the sense that linen is so . Walter Stanhope , whom at one time I suspected of a very vivid admiration for Mrs . Edwardes , declares that her hands are the brightest piece of painting he ever saw in nature . And when , at times , he has called me Tristan , I assure you that he hit closer than he thought . Even the sadness of the name fits ; for when I left our own valley to escape from sadness , I was mistaken to seek the antidote in England ; and the person of all others who seemed most likely , in my wandering , to give a healthier mood , is now a source of anxiety . There is something seriously amiss in the household of the Edwardeses : neither of them is happy ;
although Edwardes is prosperous in all respects , and their children are the envy of all . But I have found that it is often so in English houses ; anil there is this difference between the sorrows of the Englishman and those ol any other countryman whom I have known , that his do not so often lie w thc natural visitations of humanity—in happiness snatched away by death , in disappointed love , in sudden reverses of life—as in softie sell-made trouble , or some slow negative endurance , too paltry to talk about- I * not sorrow so much as " worry . " This , however , has been one reason wh y I have written less ; for I l » lltl much to note and think upon , and little definite to tell . -
1 " T I must confess that in Cheshire thc reason was less respectable . * might have told you much that Stanhope said in our long walk , onr rule , nnd the sail wc took in coining round to Liverpool ; but in the first p lace , tours have been drugs with your English reading ; and iu the next , conversations reported after long intervals are not good material . S tanho » has told me much that made English society intelligible , and his conversations may reuppear in more fresh and substantia ! form . My note _froin v "" -i-i' - _-- " ¦ " " _M ... » _ot .. » . ..., «¦ * _" . .... —J ,
Wemeth was the reflex of life in a country house—empty . H ' have put n brace of game within , it would exactly have contained life amounts to at the foot of the hills in Cheshire . I have now _accounts for that abortive letter-bud ; and also for my not writing moi ' c when enclosed Julie's letter . If you had known her , how much more ehiirinuu , that would have seemed to you ; for we cannot read a letter _thorough y until we can recall the voice and maimer of the writer—until wc can " what we read . . Do not imagine from what I have said that life is extinct in Kng l «« i < ' * V 1 111 * 1 * Let twenty-nix millions attest the contrary , if you , most august H elen ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 11, 1852, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_11091852/page/20/
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