Letters From India: Describing A Journey In The British Dominions Of India

It was undertaken by order of the French government. The book is in two volumes in giving an English translation of the author?s letters to his family and friends, during his travels in India, we shall endeavour to supply a great defect in the French edition of this work, by stating a few particulars of the life of this interesting young victim to science, prior to his departure for those shores where he was doomed to find a premature grave. At a very early age, he evinced a strong attachment to natural history, which was probably strengthened by his acquaintance with the late Baron Olivier. His intimacy with the Tracy family, and especially with Victor de Tracy, for many years past one of the most distinguished members of the French legislature, made him an ideologist, though the natural bent of his mind led him rather to investigate facts than to unravel the perplexities of metaphysics. And it is a singular contradiction, that at the very time he was pursuing his researches in natural science, doubting everything until proved by the test of his senses, he indulged, when yielding to the confidence of friendship, in all the hypothetic ratiocination of the Tracy philosophy. This exercise of his mind, and the opinions he imbibed from it, probably induced him, soon after he left school, to become a member of one of those societies, so numerous in France, where metaphysical politics are debated, and lead to wild and impracticable theories which mar every generous exertion for rational improvement. It was accompanied with a map of India and a portrait of the author.