Captain Skinner, in one of his Excursions, says arriving at the village of Lugrassa, I thought there was an appearance of desolation about it.  I saw no people within the village, and observed merely a few stragglers about the fields.  Four or five men had died during the last week, and some before:  such mortality would depopulate a mountain city in a month.  Nothing can be more melancholy than a pestilence among these fragments of humanity:  cut off from their fellow-mountaineers by high ridges, these isolated little communities are left to perish unknown and unmourned.

I have learned from some natives, who have lately been at Badri Nath, that that neighbourhood also has been ravaged by the cholera morbus.  They cannot check the disease:  it seizes them in all situations—­in their houses—­in the fields; and in a very few hours they are its victims.  As the most hardy fall first, the infants, deprived of their protectors, should they escape the infection, must die of starvation.  The cattle are abandoned, the crops neglected, and every traveller shuns the “city of the plague:”  and even that precaution is no security.  Pilgrims die in agony on the road:  to enter one of these little vales is indeed to enter “the valley of the shadow of death.”—­The inhabitants resign themselves to their destiny:  the same fate would await them in a neighbouring village, perhaps, should they seek refuge there.  They cling to their homes to the last gasp; and the survivor of a once happy people, where all were gay but a few days before, has to steal to his grave unnoticed, or roam elsewhere for human intercourse.  Could the vision of “the Last Man” be ever realized, it would be in the highest habitations of the Himalaya mountains; for there many a little world is left for its last man to mourn over!

* * * * *

NEW BOOKS

* * * * *

CHARLEMAGNE.

[The appearance of a Life of Charlemagne in these days of cobweb literature may probably be regarded as a phenomenon by booksellers.  Whatever their feelings may be upon the matter, we are inclined to regard it as a valuable contribution to our substantial literature.  The author, Mr. G.P.R.  James has hitherto produced no work that can at all compete with the present in our esteem.  He has shown his aptitude for research in three or four semi-historical novels, which will be forgotten, while his Life of Charlemagne will be allowed place with our standard historians.  He has wisely left the novel to the titled folks of the Burlington-street press, and betaken himself to better studies, that will not only gain him a name, but maintain him a proud distinction, in the literature of his country.  We trust the public—­for, in these days, every man is a Mecaenas—­will reward his industry and talent, and thus encourage him to proceed in his design—­to illustrate the History of France by the Lives of her Great Men; each volume, though forming a distinct work, being connected with that which preceded it, by a view of the intervening period.  The portion before us has our most cordial approbation and recommendation.