16 DECEMBER 1837, Page 17

LIEUTENANT WHITE ' S VIEWS IN INDIA, EDITED 111 ? EMMA ROBERTS.

SINCE the territory of the Ghoorkas has been added to the Bri- tish possessions in India, the wonders and beauties of the Hima- laya have been explored in various directions by officers of the Indian army, and other enterprising European residents. The present series of views were made by Lieutenant WHITE in the course of a journey to the sources of the Ganges and Jumna they are twenty-nine in number, and have received the pictorial dressing of TURNER, STA: FIELD, and other less eminent artists; Miss EMMA ROBERTS illustrating them by descriptions drawn from the notes of several tourists, and her own experience of In- dian life.

" Travelling in the Himalaya," says the editress, "combines all the pleasures of savage life with the luxuries of civilization ;" though mixed up of course with a due share of fatigue, in- convenience, and even danger. The scenery, we may add. combines the desolate grandeur of " Alps and Apennines." with the verdurous freshness of more temperate regions, and the prodigal luxuriance of vegetation and gorgeous hues of a tropical climate. The prominent features of the scesery of course are the mountain- tedgee,spreading mound on every side, a billowy sea of hills, with the white pinnacles of the snowy range rising like a barrier of icebergs from a polar ocean, and seeming as their glittering summits are lost in the clouds as if they sustained the heavens. Clothed with forests of large trees, bushes of rhodo- dendron, and creeping plants to the height of 11,000 or 12,000 feet above the level of the sea, the immense undulations are in- tersected by precipitous ravines, opening into rich vallies watered by mountain streams ; the roads winding along the sides of the heights, whose rocky surfaces are varied by smooth terraces of turf, enamelled with violets, primroses, and cowslips, or carpeted with atrae berries ; while fruit-trees and currant and raspberry- bushes are found in profusion. The sportsman is furnished with abundarre of game : antelopes bound across hie•path, leaping over the clefts of rock with winged lightness, and the hill-pheasant and partridge spring up at his feet.

The charms of this romantic scenery are on a scale of such vastness that they defy the power of the pencil to convey an ade- quate idea of their immensity without the aid of reflection and fancy : even TURNER, who has rendered the outline and details of Lieutenant WHITE'S sketches into the grandest pictorial cha- racter that a miniature size will admit of, " makes Ossa like a wart ;" and his splendid colouring, if it were not lost in the engraving, could hardly equal the gorgeous effects of light, thus vividly described- " The skies of England, though not without their charms, and producing oeca,ienally some fine effects, do not afford the elighest notion of this mountain hemisphere. with its extraordinary variety of colours, its green and scarlet ever.. ings, and noon-day skies of mellon purple, edged at the horizon with a huzy straw.colour. It is impossible, in fact, to travel through the Himalaya, with- out perpetually recurring to the rich and changeful hues of its skies ; every day some hitherto unnoticed state of the atmosphere producing seine new effect, and calling forth the admiration of the most insensible beholder. This is particu- larly the case at dawn; for, while the lower world is immersed in the dtei.a.,t shade, the splintered points of the higlle,t range, which first catch the golden ray, assume a luminous appearance, flaming like crimson lamps along the I:,:,- yens,—for as yet they seem not to belong to earth, all below tieing involved in impenetrable gloom. As the daylig,ht advances, the whole of the chain ihi-hei with a deeper dye; the grand forms of the nearer mountains emerge; and night slowly withdrawing her obscuring veil, a new enchantment decks the scene. The effects of the light and shadows are not less beautiful than astonishing, de- fining distant objects with a degree of sharpness and accuracy which is almost inconceivable: and until the sun is high up in the heavens, the lower ranges of the mountains appear to be of the deepest purple hue, while others, tipped with gold, start oat from their dark background in bold and splendid relief. A new and sublime variety is afforded when a storm is gathering at the base of the snowy chasm ; and dark rolling volumes of clouds, spreading themselves over the face of nature, give an awful character to the scene."

This extract gives the tone of the landscapes of the Himalaya; and it may serve also as a specimen of Miss RoitenTs's style. The engravings from TURNER'S drawings convey a feeling of sunny warmth that seems to belong to the atmosphere, and also represent the solidity and expanse of the scene ; without any of that confused exaggeration which he is prone to run into. The frontispiece, a view of the Ganges—where the steam-boats imoe ply, astonishing the natives by the swiftness of the "rue-ship" with its trail of surf and its smoky crest, while the marble hall of the Moguls is used as a coal-cellar—is luminous with sunlight reflected on the smooth surface cf the stream; and in the moun- tain views the eye travels over each successive wavy ridge before it reaches the lofty and distant horizon. The " View near Jub- lama " seems as if the forms were the same as when Chaos sub- sided. STANFIELD'S views have great force and distinctness, but they have not the golden atmosphere and immeasurable space of TURNER'S. The ascent of the Choor Mountain, a snowscene by moonlight, is strikingly real ; wanting, however, the elements of vastness and grandeur. The engravings are not always worthy of the oriainals.