d
in expiating committed sins. She then removed her jewels and presented
them to her relations, saying a few words to each with a calm, soft
smile of encouragement and hope. The Brahmins then presented her with a
lighted torch, bearing which

'Fresh as a flower just blown,
And warm with life, her youthful pulses playing,'

she stepped through the fatal door, and sat within the pile. The body of
her husband, wrapped in rich kincob, was then carried seven times round
the pile, and finally laid across her knees. Thorns and grass were piled
over the door, and the European officers present insisted that free
space should be left, as it was hoped the poor victim might yet relent,
and rush from her fiery prison to the protection so freely offered. The
command was readily obeyed; the strength of a child would have sufficed
to burst the frail barrier which confined her, and a breathless pause
succeeded; but the woman's constancy was faithful to the last. Not a
sigh broke the death-like silence of the crowd, until a slight smoke
curling from the summit of the pyre, and then a tongue of flame darting
with bright and lightning-like rapidity into the clear blue sky, told us
that the sacrifice was complete. Fearlessly had this courageous woman
fired the pile, and not a groan had betrayed to us the moment when her
spirit fled. At sight of the flame a fiendish shout of exultation rent
the air, the tom-toms sounded, the people clapped their hands with
delight as the evidence of their murderous work burst on their view;
whilst the English spectators of this sad scene withdrew, bearing deep
compassion in their hearts, to philosophize as best they might on a
custom so fraught with horror, so incompatible with reason, and so
revolting to human sympathy. The pile continued to burn for three hours;
but from its form it is supposed that almost immediate suffocation must
have terminated the sufferings of the unhappy victim."

There is a very charming book, brightly written, and dealing with an
interesting people, which reaches very high in the literature of travel.
We refer to Lady Eastlake's "Residence on the Shores of the Baltic,
described in a series of Letters," in which, with a polished pen and a
quick observation, she sets before us the patriarchal simplicity of life
and honest character of the Esthonians. Travel-books by ladies were rare
at the time that Lady Eastlake (then Miss Rigby) wrote, and the success
of her work was in