the religious position of the Cagots; for there appears to be little doubt that, while they were thus admitted to the benefit of the holy water, they were generally excluded from the recep

tion of the sacraments."

These severities and proscriptions now happily no longer exist, and the Cagots indiscriminately mingle with the rest of the Christian congregation, and as freely participate in all the privileges of the Church. Still the traces of what they

have suffered under the civil and ecclesiastical powers, are to be found in the race at the present day, if we are to credit our author's description:

"They seemed as though they groaned under the superincumbent moral weight of a persecution of a thousand years. They were low in stature, not perhaps grossly deformed in person, but their figures, nevertheless, unlike other human beings; weak and tottering (though not apparently of great age) as if their joints had been lately loosened under the kindly influence of the Inquisition. Their complexions were sallow in the last degree; and their appearance bore out their reputation of being of weak intellect. This character, I was told, had for many years been declining, and was now nearly obliterated, among the reputed Cagots, through the mixture of new blood. But the appearance of those whom I have just described so nearly corresponded to the written descriptions of the mediæval Cagots, that I should be inclined to acquiesce in the tradition of the place, which excluded them from the influence of intermarriages with the people of Bigorre."

Leaving the Cagots, the author turned his steps towards the Eastern Pyrenees, with the ultimate object of visiting the republic of Andorre, and thus his course lay through the mountains of Catalonia and the plains of Foix. We pass his observations upon Luchon, and his comparison between that resort of fashionable valetudinarians and the celebrated watering place of Ischl in the Styrian Alps. The author did not ascend the Maladetta, but contented himself with a view of it from the opposite side of the dark ravine. He has given us a description of the mode of accomplishing that difficult feat, which is not indeed dissimilar to that of the

"The ascent of the Maladetta is now not al

together impracticable to those who are able to encounter great exertion, and who do not object to be put into harness, and to be driven in rests, of course, in the insidious nature of the a team by a trio of mountaineers. The danger snow-drifts, which are not less hazardous than Irish bogs. Those, therefore, who wish to climb the mountain, are compelled to wait (like the constituent elements of an Oriental caravan at the edge of the Desert) until an adequate number of candidates for the enterprise has accumulated, either at Luchon or at some less hospitable hospice at the edge of the mountains; gether into a vertical column, in single file, and when all these unfortunates are strapped toare marched up the snowy ascent, charging the glaciers on their route. The object of all this is obvious enough. If the leaders should fall in, the wheelers, to whom they are attached, pull them out. The whole team is kept in a right line, and by this means goes over the same the ascent of the Maladetta as exists for the ground. There is no such artificial facility for ascent of Mont Blanc: it is a far less beaten route, and, I should be disposed to think, a more hazardous experiment. To the weak, (or to those of ordinary strength, whose powers fail to satisfy the exertion demanded for the enterprise,) the alternative, "Go on, or perish," must be er help to drag the weaker out of the difficulty; any thing but agreeable. No doubt the strongbut it would seem hard under such circumstances to choose between being dragged involuntarily over endless regions of eternal ice, and being chained there stationary, like Prometheus, for ever and a day.”

From this scenery the author returned to Luchon, and then passed along the French frontier into Ariège, and subsequently crossing the Spanish frontier he visited the mountain regions of Western Catalonia. Here is a lively description of a storm which he encountered in his descent from Mount Collat, in company with a cockney Englishman, whom he picked up en route, and whom he compares to an unfortunate hippopotamus that had accidentally swam out of the Nile, and had lost its way in the watery wilderness of the Levant :

"At the most difficult and precipitous point, the clouds descended to the earth; and the view before us, just now spreading over the tended to our horses' heads. It was a startling boundless highlands of Catalonia, barely exnovelty to be carried over the mountains by animals to all appearance destitute both of heads

and tails! We were summarily brought to a dead halt, and nothing but the closest possible proximity prevented us from being utterly lost to each other. But the clouds went onward on their sublime, ethereal way; and the lurid light of an autumn sun, struggling with dark thunderclouds above, once more disclosed the course before us.

The deluge and the torrent, however, were close at hand: down they came simultaneously from the heavens and from the mountain-tops: the wind roared amid the pine-woods, and swept down the rock-clefts with its hideous howl: the crashing of the thunder shook the very mountains to their base: the lightning transformed the sombre fir-forests into fiery groves; the new-born cataract swept over the verdure of the hill-sides: solitary trees that had survived the seventy years of man, snapped in their very trunks, were hurled down the precipice in the sport of the whirlwind; and the dissolved mists, mingling with the dark substance of the soil, discharged down the precipices torrents of liquid coal! It was beneath the shelter of rocks alone that we could proceed; and even by their sides we were nearly blown off our horses' backs. The storm lasted nearly two hours. Ere its close, our track had become almost impassable. The surcharged waters of the Essera burst on every side around us; and paths gave place to cataracts. We were at last forced to dismount and climb the rocks forming the debris from the enormous ridge which lay above us. The horses climbed after us as they could, more than once rolling on their sides. At length we reached less uneven ground, and a commanding view. The storm had spent itself; the wind was hushed;

and the dark thunder-scroll was rolled back over one half of the angry heaven. We were on the boundary of the two empires. To our left lay the dark plains of Catalonia, still in all their wild and murky gloom: to the right, quivering in the brilliant glare of an autumnal sun, were spread before us the rich and golden vales of Ariège."

It would seem that the author had the good fortune for we esteem it a good fortune for every traveller-to fall into the midst of a band of mountain robbers; and he details with much circumstantiality, and we hope with a reasonable regard to veracity, his perilous position and the address with which he extricated himself from his danger, when escape seemed little short of a miracle. We own to much scepticism in general upon the subject of these romantic adventures; and, for ourselves, we can say that though always most desirous of falling in with a solitary robber or cut-throat-we rather believe we should have preferred a single specimen at a time-we never had the

happiness, either upon mountain or in valley, to succeed; and travelled many a solitary pass, without guide or companion, without so much as having our pocket picked, to say nothing of a clasp-knife Neversheathed in our smaller intestines. theless, we deny no man's better luck or happier experiences, so let our traveller enjoy the honor of his adventure, seeing that he has lived to tell it.

and in the territory of Cerdagne and RousUpon the French side of the Pyrenees, sillon, exists a very singular people. In the midst of the progress and civilization which for centuries have been going on northward of them, they seem to cling to old thoughts, old customs, old institutions; and if one has a desire to go back the stream of time, not indeed in books but in the body, he has but to visit these lovely regions and he will find himself in the medieval times, both as regards character and imagination. What will the reader think of a land in which the old miracle, plays are still in the height of fashionwhere, upon Sunday and saint's day, one can assist at those ancient and now traditional mysteries which were the origin of our modern drama. We may observe, however, that there are some points of difference between the celebration of these mysteries to-day in Roussillon and as they were enacted in Italy or Germany in the middle ages and in the time of the Trouvères. They They now embrace a shorter period of dramatic action, seldom exceeding a few hours, though occasionally adjourned from Sunday to Sunday; and they no longer represent heaven, earth, and hell, by the triple scaffolding or stages -a very significant mode of suggesting the respective altitudes of these localities, according to the popular topographical ideas in old times-and we are disposed to think in modern times, too-extensively prevalent. Our author was present at some of these representations. Here is his account of one of them. We must premise that the stage was raised to an elevation midway between the platform occupied by the élite of the place, and the benches and tables designed to accommodate the inferior portion of the community. The light of day-for the performance was, of course, in the day-time-was dimly admitted through colored curtains, and a depiction on canvas of the three worlds supplied the place of the medieval scaffolding.

"Never was any drama a more complete practical protest against the doctrine of dramatical Unity of Place, (except so far as scenic arrangement was concerned;) for the play which was acted on the occasion of my visit

began with the creation of the world; and after

upon earth!

succeeded by a comedy; thus forcibly reminding us of those jolly old fellows of the middle ages, "the clerks of the revels," as the tragedy recalls to our recollection the venerable "Fraternity of the

Passion."

So far as to regions that have been more or less visited by travellers who journey from France into Spain through the passes of the Pyrenees. We shall now avail ourselves of the author's experiences in his visit to a district which we believe but few Englishmen have ever entered, and of which, so far as we are aware, no account has heretofore existed in our language. And yet this is an ancient com

When, in process of time, the play arrived at the deluge, the voyage of the ark was supposed; much as the triple voyage from Thessaly to Euboea is supposed in the Trachiniæ. This, in fact, was a happy arrangement for the denizens of the pit, under the circumstance of the elevation of the stage, and of the inconvenient laws of watery gravitation. Then came the pilgrimages of the Patriarchs-then the Egyptian plagues.

The wanderings in the Desert followed; and the Jewish kingdom at length was presented upon the stage. The costume of the actors nearly killed one with laughing; and the grandest attire that was then common in Catalonia was held to be the presumptive fashion of ancient Jerusalem. The actors, too, were often wont to adorn themselves with gilt buckles and gilt buttons; and they occasionally appeared with their hair powdered in a manner which would have rendered it a mercy to the drama if Mr. Pitt's hair-powder tax had extended to Cerdagne and Roussillon."

Then followed the representation of the principal events in the life of the Redeemer. The introduction of such scenes must necessarily shock the feelings of Englishmen; yet we should not, perhaps, stigmatize them as profanity, upon a candid consideration of the genius of that form of continental worship which addresses itself so much to the senses, especially of the lower and more ignorant grades of society. And, indeed, we learn from the pages before us, that during the representation of this part of the drama the attitude of the audience was uniformly serious and attentive. What, in fact, from its novelty, might to an English spectator or auditor be either revolting or ridiculous, habit rendered to the simple and superstitious people an exhibition solemn, tragic, and instructive. To complete the medieval character of the whole performance, the miracle-play was

too

mountain fastnesses that such a political any now existing in Europe. It is only in phenomenon could exist as a state which, too small and too poor to stimulate the cupidity of neighboring nations weak to excite their apprehensions, and too inaccessible to interfere with their political views-a locality which, from its position, difficult to conquer and to hold, and when conquered, not worth the holding-is therefore left to manage its own affairs as best it may. And thus it has happened to Andorre, as it has happened to another mountain-girdled republic in Italy-San Marino-that it continues in its integrity through all surrounding changes. Despite of the state of periodical reVolutions which has become well nigh a chronic disease in its northern neighbor France, and the perpetual political troubles and changes which make the monarchical state of its southern neighbor, Spnia, as anarchical and unstable as dynastic revolutions could make her-despite of all these, it is a truly wonderful thing to see this little republic to-day nearly what it was in the ninth century-governed by its old traditional laws, and enjoying its rude freedom, and presenting nearly the identical form of government which it enjoyed in the days of Charlemange and Louis le Debonnaire. Still, if there be no change, there can be no progress; and we must, of course, expect that whatever liberty and conservative stability this little place may boast, these blessings must be dearly purchased by the very primitive condition, both as regards civilization and literature, in which its people must be, as it were, held motionless. And indeed it is very manifest, that throughout our author's details of his intercourse with the distin