of six thousand feet, and it flourishes in the valleys. The steep ride to Mafrom that height down to about two súri up the vast masses of mountain, thousand feet, or perhaps lower. Some which formed only the first and comparpeople are very fond of Indian tea, and atively insignificant spurs of the Himádeclare it to be equal if not superior, toliya, gave a slight foretaste of what is to that of the Middle Kingdom; but I do be experienced among their giant cennot agree with them at all. When my tral ranges. supplies ran out in High Asia, tea was Masúri, though striking enough, is by for some time my only artificial beverage, no means a picturesque place. It wants though that, too, failed me at last, and I the magnificent deodar and other trees was obliged to have recourse to roasted of the Simla ridge, and, except from the barley, from which really very fair coffee extreme end of the settlement, it has no can be made, and coffee quite as good as view of the Snowy Mountains, though it the liquid to be had under that name in affords a splendid outlook over the Dehra half the cafés of Europe. It is in such Doon, the Sewaliks, and the Indian circumstances that one can really test plains beyond. The "Himalayan Hotel" tea, when we are so dependent on it for there is the best hotel I have met with its refreshing and invigorating effects; in India; and there are also a club-house and I found that none of the Indian tea and a good subscription reading-room which I had with me not even that of and library. Not a few of its English Kangra, which is the best of all — was to inhabitants live there all the year round, be compared for a moment, either in its in houses many of which are placed in effects or in the pleasantness of its taste, little shelves scooped out of the precipiwith the tea of two small packages from tous sides of the mountain. The ridges Canton, which were given me by a friend on which it rests afford only about five just as I was starting from Simla. The miles of riding-paths in all, and no tablelatter, as compared with the Himáliyan land. Its height is about seven thousand tea, was as sparkling hock to home-feet-almost all the houses being bebrewed ale, and yet it was only a fair tween six thousand four hundred and specimen of the ordinary better-class teas of the Pearl River. seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea. But this insures a Looking from Rajpore at the foot of European climate; for on the southern the hills up to Masúri, that settlement face of the Himáliya the average yearly has a very curious appearance. Many temperature of London is found at a of its houses are distinctly visible along height of about eight thousand feet. The the ridges; but they are so very high up, chief recommendation of Masúri is its and so immediately above one, as to sug- equality of temperature, both from sumgest that we are in for something like mer to winter and from day to night; and the labours and the experience of Jack in most other respects its disadvantages on the bean-stalk. In the bazaar at are rather glaring. In April I found the Rajpore, I was reminded of the Alps by thermometer in a shaded place in the noticing several cases of goitre: and I open air ranged from 60° Fahr. at dayafterwards saw instances of this disease break, to 71° between two and three at Masúri; at Kalka, at the foot of the o'clock in the afternoon; and the rise Simla hills; at Simla; at Nirth, a very and fall of the mercury were very gradhot place near Rampúr in the Sutlej ual and regular indeed, though there was valley; at Lippe, a cool place, above a good deal of rain. The coldest month nine thousand feet high, in Upper Ku- is January, which has a mean temperanawur, with abundance of good water; ture of about 42° 45m.; and the hottest at Kaelang in Lahoul, a similar place, is July, which has 67° 35m. The tranbut still higher; at the Ringdom Monas-sition to the rainy season appears to tery in Zanskar, about twelve thousand make very little difference; but while feet high; in the great open valley of Kashmir; and at Peshawar in the lowlying trans-Indus plains. These cases do not all fit into any particular theory which has been advanced regarding the cause of this hideous disease; and Dr. Bramley has mentioned in the Transactions of the Medical Society of Calcutta, that in Nepal he found goitre was more prevalent on the crests of high mountains than the months of October and November are delightful, with a clear and serene sky, and an average temperature of 54°, the rainy season must be horrible, exposed as Masúri is, without an intervening rock or tree, to the full force of the Indian south-west monsoon. The Baron Carl Hügel mentions that when he was there in 1835, the rain lasted for eighty-five days, with an intermission of only a few hours. It cannot always be so bad as that at Masúri in summer, but still the place must be exceedingly wet, cold, and disagreeable during the period of the monsoon; and it is no wonder that, at such a season, the residents of the Debra Doon much prefer their warmer and more protected little valley below. 66 without some previous experience of the high Himáliya; and it is quite impassable when the monsoon is raging, as indeed the Burand Pass may be said to be also. The neophyte may also do well to remember that tigers go up to the snow on the south side of the Himáliya; and that, at the foot of the Jumnotri and Gangotri peaks, besides them panthers," and a tiger or two, he is likely enough to have snow-bears growling about his tent at night. Ac Notwithstanding the attractions of the "Himalayan Hotel," I would recommend the visitors to Masúri to get out of it as soon as possible, and to follow the exam- I had been unfortunate in not having ple of the American who said to me after obtained even a single glimpse of the forty-eight hours he could stand it no snowy Himáliya from the plains, or from longer, and that he wanted "to hear them any point of my journey to Masúri, and I panthers growling about my tent." The learned there that they were only visible two great excursions from this place are in the early morning at that season. to the Jumnotri and the Gangotri peaks, cordingly, I ascended one morning at where the sacred rivers, Jumna and Gan- daybreak to the neighbouring military ges, may be said to take their rise re- station of Landaur, and there saw these spectively. These journeys involve tent- giant mountains for the first time. Sir life, and the usual concomitants of Himá- Alexander Burnes wrote in his "Travels liyan travel, but they are well worth mak-into Bokhara," &c.-"I felt a nervous ing; for the southern side of the sunny sensation of joy as I first gazed on the Himáliya in this neighbourhood is grand Himalaya." When Bishop Heber saw indeed. It is only fifteen marches from them he "felt intense delight and awe in Masúri to the glacier from which the looking on them." Even in these antiGanges is said to issue, though, in reality, enthusiastic times I fancy most people a branch of it descends from much experience some emotion on first beholdfurther up among the mountains; and ing those lofty pinnacles of unstained these marches are quite easy except for snow, among which the gods of Hindúsnine miles near to the glacier, where than are believed to dwell. From Lanthere is a very bad road over ladders, daur a sea of mist stretched from my feet, scaffolds, &c." It is of importance to veiling, but not altogether concealing, the tourist to bear in mind that, in order ridge upon ridge of dark mountains, and to pursue his pleasure in the Himáliya, even covering the lower portions of the it is not necessary for him to descend distant great wall of snow. No sunlight from Masúri to the burning plains. The as yet fell upon this dark yet transparent hill-road to Simla I have already spoken mist, in which the mountainous surface of. There is also a direct route from of the earth, with its black abysses, Masúri to Wangtú Bridge, in the Sutlej seemed sunk as in a gloomy ocean, valley, over the Burand Pass, which is bounded by a huge coral-reef. But 15,180 feet high, and involving only two above this, dazzling and glorious in the marches on which there are no villages sunlight, high up in the deep blue heavto afford supplies. This route to Wangtú ens, there rose a white shining line of Bridge is only fourteen marches, and that gigantic "icy summits reared in air." place is so near to Chini and the Indian Nothing could have been more peculiar Kailas that the tourist might visit these and striking than the contrast between latter in a few days from it, thus seeing the wild mountainous country below some of the finest scenery in the snowy visible, but darkened as in an eclipse — Himáliya; and he could afterwards pro-and these lofty domes and pinnacles of ceed to Simla from Wangtú in eleven eternal ice and névé. No cloud or fleck marches along the cut portion of the of mist marred their surpassing radiance. Hindústhan and Tibet road. There is Every glacier, snow-wall, icy aiguille, another and still more interesting route and smooth-rounded snow-field, gleamed from Masúri to the valley of the Sutlej with marvellous distinctness in the mornover the Nila or Nilung Pass, and then ing light, though here and there the sundown the wild Buspa valley; but that beams drew out a more overpowering pass is an exceedingly difficult one, and brightness. These were the Jumnotri is somewhere about eighteen thousand and Gangotri peaks, the peaks of Badfeet high, so no one should attempt it rinath and of the Hindu Kailas; the source of mighty sacred rivers; the very centre of the Himáliya; the Himmel, or heaven of the Teuton Aryans as well as of Hindu mythology. Mount Meru itself may be regarded as raising there its golden front against the sapphire sky; the Kailas, or "Seat of Happiness," is the cœlum of the Latins; and there is the fitting, unapproachable abode of Brahma and of his attendant gods, Gandharvas and Rishis. which are passed, or seen, by the visitors to that more famous place. The first of these, and usually the first stopping-place for the night of those who go by the old bridle-road from Kalka, is Kussowli, famous for its Himáliyan beer, which is not unlike the ordinary beer of Munich. It is more rainy than Simla, more windy, and rather warmer, though as high or a little higher, and is chiefly occupied as a depot for the convalescents of European But I now felt determined to make a regiments. Close to it rises the barren closer acquaintance with these wondrous hill of Sonawur, where there is the (Sir peaks - to move among them, upon Henry) Lawrence Asylum, for boys and them, and behind them so I hurried girls of European or mixed parentage, from Masúri to Simla by the shortest between four hundred and five hundred route, that of the carriage-road from the being usually supported and educated foot of the hills through the Sewaliks to there at the expense of government. Saharunpore; by rail from thence to Two other sanitariums, Dagshai (DugAmbála, by carriage to Kalka, and from shaie) and Subáthu (Subathoo), are also Kalka to Simla in a jhampan, by the old military depots; the latter having large road, which, however, is not the shortest barracks, and houses with fine gardens way for that last section, because a mail- and orchards. The British soldier imcart now runs along the new road. Ambála, proves greatly in strength and appearand the roads from thence to Simla pre-ance on these heights; but it is said he sent a very lively scene in April, when does not appreciate the advantages of the governor-general, the commander-in- being placed upon them. He does not chief, the heads of the supreme govern- like having to do so much for himself as ment, their baggage and attendants, and the clerks of the different departments, are on their way up to the summer retreat of the government of India. It is highly expedient for the traveller to avoid the days of the great rush, when it is impossible for him to find conveyance of any kind at any price — and I did so; but even coming in among the ragtag and bobtail, if deputy-commissioners and colonels commanding regiments men so tremendous in their own spheres may be thus profanely spoken of,there was some difficulty in procuring carriage and bungalow accommodation; and there was plenty of amusing com pany,- from the ton weight of the postoffice official, who required twenty groaning coolies to carry him, to the dapper little lieutenant or assistant deputy-commissioner who cantered lightly along parapetless roads skirting precipices; and from the heavy-browed sultana of some Gangetic station, whose stern look palpably interrogates the amount of your monthly paggár, to the more lily-like young Anglo-Indian dame or damsel, who darts at you a Parthian yet gentle glance, though shown "more in the eyelids than the eyes," as she trips from her jhampan or Bareilly dandy into the travellers' bungalow. In the neighbourhood of Simla there is quite a collection of sanitariums, falls to his lot when he is sent to the mountains. He misses the Indian campfollowers, who treat him below as a Chota Lord Sahib; and, above all, he misses the varied life of the plains, and the amusement of the bazaar. I am afraid, too, mountains fail to afford him much gratification after his first burst of pleasure on finding himself among and upon them. "Sure, and I've been three times round that big hill to-day, and not another blessed thing is there to do up here!" I heard an Irish corporal indignantly exclaim. To the officers and their families the hills are a delightful change; but to the undeveloped mind of Tommy Atkins they soon become exceedingly tiresome, though I believe the soldiers enjoy much being employed in the working parties upon the roads, where they have the opportunity of laying by a little money. No The mountains between Kalka and Simla are wild and picturesque enough, but they give no idea of either the grandeur or the beauty of the Himáliya; and the traveller should be warned against being disappointed with them. ranges of eternal snow are in sight; no forests of lofty deodar; no thick jungle, like that of the Terai; no smiling valleys, such as the Dehra Doon. We have only the ascending of steep bare mountainsides, in order to go down them on the other side, or to wind along bare moun Himáli Oh there! oh there! Where pipes the marmot - fiercely growls the bear! Know'st thou the cliffs above the gorges dread, Know'st thou it thus? knows decay, So nigh the realms of everlasting day; Oh there! oh there! tain-ridges. The hills either rest on | Where whiter peaks than marble rise around, each other, or have such narrow gorges And icy ploughshares pierce the flower-clad between, that there is no room for cul- ground? tivated valleys; and their faces are so Know'st thou it well? steep, and so exposed to the action of the Indian rains, that all the soil is swept away from them; and so we have nothing to speak of but red slopes of rock and shingle, with only a few terraced patches of cultivation, and almost no trees at all, except in the immediate vicinity of the military stations. The worst parts of Syria would show to advantage compared with the long approach to Simla. I understand, how-Scale cliffs, and granite avalanches dare! Go there! go there! ever, that the actual extent of cultivation is considerably greater than one would Know'st thou the land where man scarce. readily suppose, and occasionally the creeping vine and the cactus do their best to clothe the rocky surface. On ascending the Simla ridge itself, however, a change comes over the scene. yan cedars and oaks cover the heights and crowd the glades; rhododendrons, if it be their season of bloom, give quite a glory of colour; and both white and red roses appear among the brambles and berberries of the thick underwood: a healthy resinous odour meets one from the forest of mighty pine-trees, mingled with more delicate perfumes; beds of fern with couches of moss lie along the We have never felt any doubt at all roadside; masses of cloud come rolling that the process known in the terminoldown the valleys from the rounded,ogy of Evangelical Churches as 66 converthickly wooded summit of Hatto; deep glens, also finely wooded, fall suddenly before our feet: on the one side, over a confusion of hills and the edifices of Subáthu and Dagshai, we have glimpses of the yellow burning Indian plain; on the other, through the oak-branches and the tower-like stems of deodar, there shines the long white line of eternal snow upon the giant mountains of Chamba, Kúlú, and Spiti. It was matter of life or death for me to reach those snowy solitudes, and I found the words of Mignon's song in "Wilhelm Meister" flitting across my brain, and taking a new meaning: a From The Spectator. THE METAPHYSICS OF CONVERSION. sion " is in very many cases indeed a real one, though it is a very mischievous sort of thing for revivalists or any one else to teach that there can be no true religion without some sudden spiritual crisis, such as John Wesley, for instance, dated in his own case as having happened precisely at a quarter before nine on the 24th May, 1738. No doubt there are many persons and some social classes for whom there is far more chance of "conversion," in Messrs. Moody's and Sankey's sense, than of any gradual change; and unquestionably this would be true of all persons like the famous Colonel Gardiner, for instance, (the officer whose life and marvellous conversion was recounted by his friend, Dr. Doddridge), persons, we mean, embarked in a life of conscious evil, — a life which, unless arrested in mid-career, is pretty sure to waste the available forces of character, and before long to leave too little strength of purpose of any kind for an effectual change. But the curious thing is that the high doctrine of "conversion," though it may have won its greatest number of apparent triumphs over persons, whether poor or rich, of Colonel Gardi ner's type, -i.e., persons who had never, "not able to bear strong meat," and even been earnest either in morality or religion" carnal," "Ye are God's building, ye are till the moment of their conversion, has the temple of God," which, argued Wesderived all its authority from men of aley, could not have been said of them if very different type indeed, men like St. they had had no saving faith at all, but Paul and John Wesley, whose whole life must have referred to persons who had has been in some sense profoundly reli- saving faith, but who had it in a weak gious, and in whom the convulsive change form. Thus we see that this great called "conversion" has represented not preacher of conversion had already been a change from a life of reckless pleasure compelled to distinguish sharply between or license to a life of faith, but only a three very fine shades of his own relichange from one type of faith to another gious belief, the shade of mere belief, type of faith, the distinction between which left him still beyond the pale of the two being frequently by no means salvation owing to want of faith, though apparent to the external world. In St. he was earnestly and persistently seeking Paul, no doubt, the change was intelli- it,the shade which amounted to saving gible enough, because it marked the mo- faith, but only in a weak measure, like ment when he surrendered his character that of the Corinthians who were still to a new personal influence, an influence "carnal," — and the shade which was not in many respects in vivid contrast to that only adequate for salvation, but adequate exerted by the Judaic hopes and tradi- also for producing peace and perfect freetions in which he had been brought up. dom from doubt. But in a great many famous cases of "conversion," there is no passage over an external boundary of this kind to mark the change. John Wesley, for instance, had been engaged in voluntary spiritual and religious duties of precisely the same kind as those of his later life, for nearly ten years before he admitted his own conversion. Eight years before its date he had cut himself off from the academic world around him, had visited the prisons of Oxford till all his friends thought him mad, and had sailed with some Moravians to Georgia to help in the work of the Gospel there; and yet it was not till after his return to England that, under the teaching of Peter Böhler, he became suddenly convinced that he had at last obtained the saving faith of which he was in search. He had persuaded himself that faith must be all or nothing, that it hardly admitted of degrees, and that for eight years and more before he obtained it he had had as little of what he held to be saving faith as in the days of his schoolboy unconcern. Yet so fine was the change, even to his own consciousness, that though Wesley could date the minute of his conversion, he was compelled to note that at first it brought him no joy, even if it brought him comparative peace, and that it was consistent with much doubt and fear; and he was fain to apologize for his state to the teachers of a yet higher doctrine, who taught that any one who could feel doubt or fear could not be said to have even a weak faith, but must be declared to have no faith at all, by quoting St. Paul's language to the Corinthians, whom he declared to be Now what is the mental rationale of this curious religious tendency to insist not merely on "conversion" in the sense of a great change from one kind of aim, and purpose, and drift in life to a totally different one, but on conversion within conversion, -on a conversion which affects not so much the attitude and direction of the mind's movement, as the refinements of its own conscious manipulation of its inward condition? St. Paul, though his own change was much more tangible, since it marked his acknowl edgment of a new master, yet set the example of this anxious manipulation of the intricate inward drama of the heart, in his careful discrimination of the "law by which he was condemned as dead in trespasses and sins, from the new personal life in which he was restored to peace and freedom. It would seem, indeed, that there is a large class of religious minds in whom the real change from worldly to spiritual life is so far from sudden that nothing could well be more gradual, and yet in whom there is, nevertheless, some imperious subjective necessity compelling them to draw an invisible equator between the opposite hemispheres of condemnation and salvation. Is there not something strange in the fact that the metaphysics of conversion, as we may call them, do not really arise out of the cases of sudden change from a life of crime and profligacy to a life of self-devotion, but rather out of the cases of the most gradual change, change which has been as steady and uniform as the growth of the dawn into the day? We believe that the explanation of this |