Excerpt from Tibet, Tartary and Mongolia: Their Social and Political Condition, and the Religion of Boodh, as There Existing

This little volume pretends to no higher merit than to be a faithful abstract of the informa tion, regarding the civil and religious Institu tions of Tibet, Tartary, and Mongolia, that has been furnished by travellers, or by men who have made the language and literature of those countries their especial study.

It was undertaken before M. Huo's account of his adventurous journey through these re gions, in company with M. Gabet, had ao quired the popularity it has since attained. That work will now have been read, either in the original French, or in the English translation, by all who take an interest in matters of this description, and by many more besides, whoread only for entertainment and to pass the hour. We have no wish, and if we had the desire, the effort would be vain, to withdraw readers from the perusal of these lively and instructive volumes. If, however, we had thought them likely to be so soon made generally accessible to English readers, the idea of printing and pub lishing a work, the half of which is an abstract of M. Huo's Souvenirs of his journey, would never have occurred to us. But our abstract, with its notice of antecedent journeys into the same regions, and its summary of the result of recent researches into the sacred literature of the Boodhists, appeared just as M. Huo's work began to excite attention in England, an d has been read along with it; finding so much favour, that the whole of the copies originally printed have been sold, and the book is now no longer procurable by those who desire to read or refer to it. This alone is reason sufficient for reprinting the work, with such revisions and corrections, as, on a careful re-perusal, it hasseemed to need. Of these, the most material have been suggested by the discovery, that the Chinese itinerary, which guided these mission aries in their journey on return, was the iden tical work that had been translated into Rus sian by the Archimandrite Hyacinthe Bitchou rin, and was commented upon and further illustrated by the learned Klaproth, and so re published in Paris in 1831. By the aid of this work, we have been enabled to trace ac curately the route followed by these travellers in the latter part of their adventurous journey, and greatly to improve the sketch map given in the first edition, so as to add to its value as a geographical record.

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