square and heavy, and unpleasantly shining. His mouth is large, though his lips are thin and bloodless; and his big, prominent, pale brown eyes inspire anything but confidence. His nose, however, is his redeeming feature: it is pronounced straight and well formed; though I myself should have liked it better did it not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of a red-coloured cork. I never could endure to shake hands with Mr Slope. A cold, clammy perspiration always exudes from him, the small drops are ever to be seen standing on his brow, and his friendly grasp is unpleasant. Such is Mr Slope-such is the man who has suddenly fallen into the midst of Barchester Close, and is destined there to assume the station which has heretofore been filled by the son of the late bishop. So. The Humanity of the Age. This is undoubtedly the age of humanity-as far, at least, as England is concerned. A man who beats his wife is shocking to us, and a colonel who cannot manage his soldiers without having them beaten is nearly equally We are not very fond of hanging; and some of us go so far as to recoil under any circumstances from taking the blood of life. We perform our operations under chloroform; and it has even been suggested that those schoolmasters who insist on adhering in some sort to the doctrines of Solomon should perform the operations in the same guarded manner. If the disgrace be absolutely necessary, let it be inflicted; but not the bodily pain. So far as regards the low externals of humanity, this is doubtless a humane age. Let men, women, and children have bread; let them have, if possible, no blows, or, at least, as few as may be; let them also be decently clothed; and let the pestilence be kept out of their way. In venturing to call these low, I have done so in no contemptuous spirit; they are comparatively low if the body be lower than the mind. The humanity of the age is doubtless suited to its material wants, and such wants are those which demand the promptest remedy. But in the inner feelings of men to men, and of one man's mind to another man's mind, is it not an age of extremest cruelty? There is sympathy for the hungry man, but there is no sympathy for the unsuccessful man who is not hungry. If a fellow-mortal be ragged, humanity will subscribe to mend his clothes; but humanity will subscribe nothing to mend his ragged hopes, so long as his outside coat shall be whole and decent. To him that hath shall be given; and from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath. This is the special text that we delight to follow, and success is the god that we delight to worship. Ah, pity me! I have struggled and fallen-struggled so manfully, yet fallen so utterly-help me up this time that I may yet push forward again!' Who listens to such a plea as this? Fallen! do you want bread?' 'Not bread, but a kind heart and a kind hand.' 'My friend, I cannot stay by you; I myself am in a hurry; there is that fiend of a rival there even now gaining a step on me. beg your pardon, but I will put my foot on your shoulder-only for one moment.' Occupet extremus scabies. I Yes. Let the devil take the hindmost; the three or four hindmost if you will; nay, all but those strongrunning horses who can force themselves into noticeable places under the judge's eye. This is the noble shibboleth with which the English youth are now spurred on to deeds of what shall we say?-money-making activity. Let every place in which a man can hold up his head be the reward of some antagonistic struggle, of some grand competitive examination. Let us get rid of the fault of past ages. With us, let the race be ever to the swift; the victory always to the strong. And let us always be racing, so that the swift and the strong shall ever be known among us. But what, then, for those who are not swift, not strong? Ve victis! Let them go to the wall. They can hew wood probably; or, at anyrate, draw water. Letter-writing. This at least should be a rule through the letterwriting world-that no angry letter be posted till fourand-twenty hours shall have elapsed since it was written. We all know how absurd is that other rule, that of saying the alphabet when you are angry. Trash! Sit down and write your letter; write it with all the venom in your power; spit out your spleen at the fullest ; 'twill do you good. You think you have been injured; say all that you can say with all your poisoned eloquence, and gratify yourself by reading it while your temper is still hot. Then put it in your desk; and as a matter of course, burn it before breakfast the following morning. Believe me that you will then have a double gratification. A pleasant letter I hold to be the pleasantest thing that this world has to give. It should be goodhumoured; witty it may be, but with a gentle diluted wit. Concocted brilliancy will spoil it altogether. Not long, so that it be not tedious in the reading; nor brief, so that the delight suffice not to make itself felt. It should be written specially for the reader, and should apply altogether to him, and not altogether to any other. It should never flatter-flattery is always odious. But underneath the visible stream of pungent water there may be the slightest under-current of eulogy, so that it be not seen, but only understood. Censure it may contain freely, but censure which, in arraigning the conduct, implies no doubt as to the intellect. It should be legibly written, so that it may be read with comfort; but no more than that. Caligraphy betokens caution, and if it be not light in hand, it is nothing. That it be fairly grammatical and not ill spelt, the writer owes to his schoolmaster, but this should come of habit, not of care. Then let its page be soiled by no business; one touch of utility will destroy it all. If you ask for examples, let it be as unlike Walpole as may be. If you can so write it that Lord Byron might have written it, you will not be very far from high excellence. Early Days-Lovers' Walks. Ah! those lovers' walks, those loving lovers' rambles. Tom Moore is usually somewhat sugary and mawkish ; but in so much he was right. If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this. They are done and over for us, O my compatriots! Never again-unless we are destined to rejoin our houris in heaven, and to saunter over fields of asphodel in another and a greener youth-never again shall those joys be ours! And what can ever equal them? 'Twas then, between sweet hedgerows, under green oaks, with our feet rustling on the crisp leaves, that the world's cold reserve was first thrown off, and we found that those we loved were not goddesses, made of buckram and brocade, but human beings like ourselves, with blood in their veins and hearts in their bosoms-veritable children of Adam like ourselves. 'Gin a body meet a body comin' through the rye.' Ah, how delicious were those meetings! How convinced we were that there was no necessity for loud alarm! How fervently we agreed with the poet! My friends, born together with me in the consulship of Lord Liverpool, all that is done and over for us! There is a melancholy in this that will tinge our thoughts, let us draw ever so strongly on our philosophy. We can still walk with our wives, and that is pleasant too, very-of course. But there was more animation in it when we walked with the same ladies under other names. Nay, sweet spouse, mother of dear bairns, who hast so well done thy duty; but this was so, let thy brows be knit ever so angrily. That lord of thine has been indifferently good to thee, and thou to him hast been more than good. Uphill together have we walked peaceably his prostration by misfortune, had been independent labouring; and now arm in arm ye shall go down the in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extentgradual slope which ends below there in the green conditions which, powerless without an opportunity, as churchyard. 'Tis good and salutary to walk thus. But an opportunity without them is barren, would have for the full cup of joy, for the brimming springtide of given him a sure and certain lift upwards when the human bliss, oh give me back- ! Well, well, well; favourable conjunction should have occurred. But this it is nonsense; I know it, but may not a man dream incurable loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his now and again in his evening nap, and yet do no harm? time ruinously. The spring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap might soon come which could not. Vixi puellis nuper idoneus, How well Horace knew all about it, but that hanging up of the gittern; * one would fain have put it off, had falling hairs, and marriage vows, and obesity have per mitted it. THOMAS ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. It was the first day of June, and the sheep-shearing pasture, being all health and colour. Every green was season culminated, the landscape, even to the leanest swollen with racing currents of juice. God was palyoung, every pore was open, and every stalk was pably present in the country, and the devil had gone with the world to town. Flossy catkins of the later kinds, fern-fronds like bishops' crosiers, the squareheaded moschatel, the odd cuckoo-pint-like an apoThe elder brother of Mr Anthony Trollope. plectic saint in a niche of malachite-clean white lady'sborn in 1810, has also been a voluminous writer, smocks, the toothwort approximating to human flesh, Residing chiefly in Florence, many of his works the enchanter's nightshade, and the black-petaled doleare connected with Italian life and literature. His ful-bells were among the quainter objects of the vegetable first two works were edited by his mother, and world in and about Weatherbury at this teeming time; were books of travel-A Summer in Brittany, and of the animal, the metamorphosed figures of Mr Jan 1840; and A Summer in Western France, 1841. Coggan, the master-shearer; the second and third shearers, He afterwards added a volume descriptive of who travelled in the exercise of their calling, and do not wanderings in Italy, Switzerland, France, and require definition by name; Henery Fray, the fourth Spain. In 1856 he produced an interesting shearer; Susan Tall's husband, the fifth; Joseph Poorscholarly illustration of Italian history, The Girl- Gabriel Oak as general supervisor. None of these were grass, the sixth; young Cain Ball as assistant-shearer, and hood of Catherine de Medici, in which he traces clothed to any extent worth mentioning, each appearing the influences that helped to form the monstrous to have hit in the matter of raiment the decent mean character of the heiress of the Medici. In 1859 between a high and low caste Hindu. An angularity Mr Trollope added to his reputation by a bio- of lineament and a fixity of facial machinery in general graphical work, A Decade of Italian Women, which proclaimed that serious work was the order of the day. was followed in 1860 by Filippo Strozzi, a history of the last days of the old Italian liberty. Several novels were then successively produced: Marietta, 1862; Giulio Malatesta, 1863; Beppo, 1864; Lindisfarn Chace, 1864; Gemma, 1866; Artingale Castle, 1867; The Dream Numbers, 1868; Leonora Casoloni, 1868; The Garstangs of Garstang Grange, &c. Mr Trollope is author also of an elaborate historical work, a History of the Commonwealth of Florence, 4 vols., 1865. THOMAS HARDY. MR THOMAS HARDY has produced a series of novels of a fresh original character, specially illustrative of English peasant life and character: Under the Greenwood Tree, Desperate Remedies, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Far from the Madding Crowd, and The Hand of Ethelberta. The dialogues of his clowns and rustics remind one of the Elizabethan times, and in some of the rural nooks of England much of this primitive style of ideas and expression may yet linger. So far as modern novels are concerned, the style of Mr Hardy's fiction is quite unique. The following extracts are from The Madding Crowd: The Great Barn and the Sheep-shearers. Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable. Gabriel lately, for the first time since I lately was fit to be called upon duty, They sheared in the great barn, called for the nonce the Shearing-barn, which on ground plan resembled a church with transepts. It not only emulated the form of the neighbouring church of the parish, but vied with it in antiquity. Whether the barn had ever formed one of a group of conventual buildings nobody seemed to be vast porches at the sides, lofty enough to admit a wagon aware; no trace of such surroundings remained. The laden to its highest with corn in the sheaf, were spanned by heavy pointed arches of stone, broadly and boldly cut, whose very simplicity was the origin of a grandeur not apparent in erections where more ornament has been attempted. The dusky, filmed, chestnut roof, braced and tied in by huge collars, curves, and diagonals, was than nine-tenths of those in our modern churches. far nobler in design, because more wealthy in material, Along each side-wall was a range of striding buttresses, throwing deep shadows on the spaces between them, which were perforated by lancet openings, combining in their proportions the precise requirements both of beauty and ventilation. One could say about this barn, what could hardly be said of either the church or the castle, its kindred in age and style, that the purpose which had dictated its original erection was the same with that to which it was still applied. Unlike and superior to either of those bodied practices which had suffered no mutilation at the two typical remnants of medievalism, the old barn emhands of time. Here at least the spirit of the builders then was at one with the spirit of the beholder now. Standing before this abraded pile, the eye regarded its present usage; the mind dwelt upon its past history with a satisfied sense of functional continuity throughout a feeling almost of gratitude, and quite of pride, at the permanence of the idea which had heaped it up. The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple gray effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military com peers. For once medievalism and modernism had a common stand-point. The lanceolate windows, the time-eaten arch-stones and chamfers, the orientation of the axis, the misty chestnut work of the rafters, referred to no exploded fortifying art or worn-out religious creed. The defence and salvation of the body by daily bread is still a study, a religion, and a desire. To-day the large side-doors were thrown open towards the sun to admit a bountiful light to the immediate spot of the shearers' operations, which was the wood threshing-floor in the centre, formed of thick oak, black with age, and polished by the beating of flails for many generations, till it had grown as slippery and as rich in hue as the state-room floors of an Elizabethan mansion. Here the shearers knelt, the sun slanting in upon their bleached shirts, tanned arms, and the polished shears they flourished, causing them to bristle with a thousand rays strong enough to blind a weak-eyed man. Beneath them a captive sheep lay panting, increasing the rapidity of its pants as misgiving merged in terror, till it quivered like the hot landscape outside. This picture of to-day in its frame of four hundred years ago did not produce that marked contrast between ancient and modern which is implied by the contrast of date. In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen's Then is the rustic's Now. In London, twenty or thirty years ago are old times; in Paris, ten years, or five; in Weatherbury, three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone. Five decades hardly modified the cut of a gaiter, the embroidery of a smock-frock, by the breadth of a hair. Ten generations failed to alter the turn of a single phrase. In these nooks the busy outsider's ancient times are only old; his old times are still new; his present is futurity. So the barn was natural to the shearers, and the shearers were in harmony with the barn. The spacious ends of the building, answering ecclesiastically to nave and chancel extremities, were fenced off with hurdles, the sheep being all collected in a crowd within these two inclosures; and in one angle a catching pen was formed, in which three or four sheep were continuously kept ready for the shearers to seize without loss of time. In the background, mellowed by tawny shade, were the three women, Maryann Money, and Temperance and Soberness Miller, gathering up the fleeces, and twisting ropes of wool with a wimble for tying them round. They were indifferently well assisted by the old maltster, who, when the malting season from October to April had passed, made himself useful upon any of the bordering farmsteads. Behind all was Bathsheba, carefully watching the men, to see that there was no cutting or wounding through carelessness, and that the animals were shorn close. A Thunder-storm. Bathsheba's property in wheat was safe for at any rate a week or two, provided always that there was not much wind. Next came the barley. This it was only possible to protect by systematic thatching. Time went on, and the moon vanished, not to reappear. It was the farewell of the ambassador previous to war. The night had a haggard look, like a sick thing; and there came finally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death. And now nothing was heard in the yard but the dull thuds of the beetle which drove in the spars, and the rustle of the thatch in the intervals. A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air. It was the first arrow from the approaching storm, and it fell wide. The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning. Gabriel saw a candle shining in 88 Bathsheba's bedroom, and soon a shadow moved to and fro upon the blind. Then there came a third flash. Manoeuvres of a most extraordinary kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead. The lightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated position could see over the landscape for at least half-a-dozen miles in front. Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving. In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth. A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving a darkness so intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands. He had stuck his ricking-rod, groom, or poignard, as it was indifferently called-a long iron lance, sharp at the extremity and polished by handling-into the stack to support the sheaves. A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some indescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod. It was the fourth of the larger flashes. A moment later and there was a smack— smart, clear, and short. Gabriel felt his position to be anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend. Not a drop of rain had fallen as yet. He wiped his weary brow, and looked again at the black forms of the unprotected stacks. Was his life so valuable to him, after all? What were his prospects that he should be so chary of running risk, when important and urgent labour could not be carried on without such risk? He resolved to stick to the stack. However, he took a precaution. Under the staddles was a long tetheringchain, used to prevent the escape of errant horses. This he carried up the ladder, and sticking his rod through the clog at one end, allowed the other end of the chain to trail upon the ground. The spike attached to it he drove in. Under the shadow of this extemporised lightning-conductor he felt himself comparatively safe. Before Oak had laid his hands upon his tools again, out leapt the fifth flash, with the spring of a serpent and the shout of a fiend." It was green as an emerald, and the reverberation was stunning. What was this the light revealed to him? In the open ground before him, as he looked over the ridge of the rick, was a dark and apparently female form. Could it be that of the only venturesome woman in the parish-Bathsheba ? The form moved on a step; then he could see no more. 'Is that you, ma'am?' said Gabriel to the darkness. 'Who is there?' said the voice of Bathsheba. 'Gabriel. I am on the rick, thatching.' 'O Gabriel! and are you? I have come about them. The weather awoke me, and I thought of the corn. I am so distressed about it; can we save it anyhow? I cannot find my husband. Is he with you?' 'He is not here.' 'Do you know where he is?' 'Asleep in the barn.' 'He promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all neglected! Can I do anything to help? Liddy is afraid to come out. Fancy finding you here at such an hour! Surely I can do something?" 'You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma'am; if you are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark,' said Gabriel. 'Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of time. It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit.' 'I'll do anything!' she said, resolutely. She instantly took a sheaf upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind the rod, and descended for another. At her third ascent the rick suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica; every knot in every straw was visible. On the slope in front of him appeared two human shapes, black as jet. The rick lost its sheen-the shapes vanished. Gabriel turned 561 his head. It had been the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and Bathsheba. Then came the peal. It hardly was credible that such a heavenly light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound. 'How terrible!' she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve. Gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aërial perch by holding her arm. At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his attitude, there was more light, and he saw as it were a copy of the tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn. It was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash in the west. The next flare came. Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching-thunder and all--and again ascended with the load. There was then a silence everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. He thought the crisis of the storm had passed. But there came a burst of light. 'Hold on!' said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and grasping her arm again. Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realised, and Gabriel could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south. It was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones-dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green. Behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. In the meantime one of the grisly forms had alighted upon the point of Gabriel's rod, to run invisibly down it, down the chain, and into the earth. Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel Bathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand-a sensation novel and thrilling enough; but love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling in such close juxtaposition with an infuriated universe. Oak had hardly time to gather up these impressions into a thought, and to see how strangely the red feather of her hat shone in this light, when the tall tree on the hill before mentioned seemed on fire to a white heat, and a new one among these terrible voices mingled with the last crash of those preceding. It was a stupefying blast, harsh and pitiless, and it fell upon their ears in a dead, flat blow, without that reverberation which lends the tones of a drum to more distant thunder. By the lustre reflected from every part of the earth, and from the wide domical scoop above it, he saw that the tree was sliced down the whole length of its tall straight stem, a huge riband of bark being apparently flung off. The other portion remained erect, and revealed the bared surface as a strip of white down the front. The lightning had struck the tree. A sulphurous smell filled the air: then all was silent, and black as a cave in Hinnom. 'We had a narrow escape!' said Gabriel. BRET HARTE, The American humorist and painter of wild life in the West (see ante, page 479), has recently produced a novel-his first complete novel-in the regular three-volume shape, entitled Gabriel Conroy (1876). It is not skilfully constructed either as to plot or dialogue, and has less originality than the earlier sketches. It opens with the following description: A Snow-storm in the Californian Sierras. Snow everywhere. As far as the eye could reachfifty miles, looking southward from the highest white peak-filling ravines and gulches, and dropping from the walls of cañons in white shroud-like drifts, fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave, hiding the bases of giant pines, and completely covering young trees and larches, rimming with porcelain the bowl-like edges of still, cold lakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the edge of the distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere over the California Sierras on the 15th day of March 1848, and still falling. It had been snowing for ten days; snowing in finely granulated powder, in damp spongy flakes, in thin feathery plumes; snowing from a leaden sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple black clouds in white flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines, like white lances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! The woods were so choked with it, the branches were so laden with it-it had so permeated, filled, and possessed earth and sky; it had so cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that all sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast, awoke no sigh or complaint from the snow-packed rigid files of forest. There was no cracking of bough nor crackle of underbush; the overladen branches of pine and fir yielded and gave way without a sound. The silence was vast, measureless, complete. Perhaps the best of all Bret Harte's productions is his Luck of Roaring Camp-so vivid, so original. The camp is one of Californian golddiggers-a rough wild crew, but not devoid of tenderness. One wretched woman is among them, and she dies after giving birth to a child. The child is brought up by the men, and becomes the 'Luck' and favourite of the camp. Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills-that air pungent with balsamic odour, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating-he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophising the helpless bundle before him, never go back on us.' 66 All went on prosperously till winter came with its floods, and then the 'luck' and light of the Roaring Camp perished: Death and Destruction at the Diggings. The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foot-hills. The snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain-creek became a river, and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous water-course that descended the hill-sides, tearing down giant trees, and scattering its drift and débris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice under water, and gold into them gulches,' said Stumpy. It's been here Roaring Camp had been forewarned. 'Water put the once, and will be here again!' And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks, and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp. In the confusion of rushing water, crushing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy nearest the riverbank was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy, the Luck of Roaring Camp had disappeared. They were returning with sad hearts, when a shout from the bank recalled them. It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had picked up, they said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did anybody know them, and did they belong here? It needed but a glance to shew them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed and bruised, but still holding the Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless. He is dead,' said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. 'Dead?' he repeated feebly. "Yes, my man, and you are dying too.' A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. Dying,' he repeated; 'he's a-taking me with him-tell the boys I've got the Luck with me now; and the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to the unknown sea. The Chinese emigrants now form a large element in Californian society; and Bret Harte presents us with a type of the colony: John Chinaman. get up and quietly walk off the stage, cannot be said to have remarkable perceptions of the ludicrous. I have often been struck with the delicate pliability of the Chinese expression and taste, that might suggest a broader and deeper criticism than is becoming these pages. A Chinaman will adopt the American costume, and wear it with a taste of colour and detail that will surpass those 'native, and to the manner born.' To look at a Chinese slipper, one might imagine it impossible to shape the original foot to anything less cumbrous and roomy, yet a neater-fitting boot than that belonging to the Americanised Chinaman is rarely seen on this side of the Continent. When the loose sack or paletot takes the place of his brocade blouse, it is worn with a refinement and grace that might bring a jealous pang to the exquisite of our more refined civilisation. Pantaloons fall easily and naturally over legs that have known unlimited freedom and bagginess, and even garrote collars meet correctly around sun-tanned throats. The new expression seldom overflows in gaudy cravats. I will back my Americanised Chinaman against any neophyte of European birth in the choice of that article. While in our own state the Greaser resists one by one the garments of the northern invader, and even wears the livery of his conqueror with a wild and buttonless freedom, the Chinaman, abused and degraded as he is, changes by correctly graded transition to the garments of Christian civilisation. There is but Bohemian eyes have never yet been pained by the one article of European wear that he avoids. These spectacle of a tall hat on the head of an intelligent Chinaman. My acquaintance with John has been made up of weekly interviews, involving the adjustment of the The expression of the Chinese face in the aggregate washing accounts, so that I have not been able to is neither cheerful nor happy. In an acquaintance of study his character from a social view-point or observe half a dozen years, I can only recall one or two excep-him in the privacy of the domestic circle. I have gathered tions to this rule. There is an abiding consciousness enough to justify me in believing him to be generally of degradation, a secret pain or self-humiliation visible honest, faithful, simple, and painstaking. Of his simin the lines of the mouth and eye. Whether it is only plicity let me record an instance where a sad and civil a modification of Turkish gravity, or whether it is the young Chinaman brought me certain shirts with most of dread Valley of the Shadow of the Drug through which the buttons missing, and others hanging on delusively by they are continually straying, I cannot say. They seldom a single thread. In a moment of unguarded irony Í insmile, and their laughter is of such an extraordinary and formed him that unity would at least have been presardonic nature-so purely a mechanical spasm, quite served if the buttons were removed altogether. He independent of any mirthful attribute-that to this day smiled sadly and went away. I thought I had hurt I am doubtful whether I ever saw a Chinaman laugh. his feelings, until the next week when he brought me A theatrical representation by natives, one might think, my shirts with a look of intelligence, and the buttons would have set my mind at ease on this point; but it carefully and totally erased. At another time, to guard did not. Indeed, a new difficulty presented itself-the against his general disposition to carry off anything as impossibility of determining whether the performance soiled clothes that he thought could hold water, I rewas a tragedy or farce. I thought I detected the low quested him to always wait until he saw me. Coming comedian in an active youth who turned two somer- home late one evening, I found the household in great saults, and knocked everybody down on entering the consternation, over an immovable celestial who had restage. But, unfortunately, even this classic resemblance mained seated on the front door-step during the day, to the legitimate farce of our civilisation was deceptive. sad and submissive, firm but also patient, and only Another brocaded actor, who represented the hero of betraying any animation or token of his mission when the play, turned three somersaults, and not only upset he saw me coming. This same Chinaman evinced some my theory and his fellow-actors at the same time, but evidences of regard for a little girl in the family, who apparently ran amuck behind the scenes for some time in her turn reposed such faith in his intellectual qualities afterward. I looked around at the glinting white teeth as to present him with a preternaturally uninteresting to observe the effect of these two palpable hits. They Sunday-school book, her own property. This book John were received with equal acclamation, and apparently made a point of carrying ostentatiously with him in his equal facial spasms. One or two beheadings which weekly visits. It appeared usually on the top of the clean enlivened the play produced the same sardonic effect, clothes, and was sometimes painfully clasped outside of and left upon my mind a painful anxiety to know what the big bundle of soiled linen. Whether John believed was the serious business of life in China. It was notice- he unconsciously imbibed some spiritual life through its able, however, that my unrestrained laughter had a pasteboard cover, as the prince in the Arabian Nights discordant effect, and that triangular eyes sometimes imbibed the medicine through the handle of the mallet, turned ominously toward the 'Fanqui devil;' but as I or whether he wished to exhibit a due sense of gratiretired discreetly before the play was finished, there were tude, or whether he hadn't any pockets, I have never no serious results. I have only given the above as an been able to ascertain. In his turn, he would someinstance of the impossibility of deciding upon the out- times cut marvellous imitation roses from carrots for ward and superficial expression of Chinese mirth. Of his little friend. I am inclined to think that the its inner and deeper existence I have some private few roses strewn in John's path were such scentless doubts. An audience that will view with a serious imitations. The thorns only were real. From the peraspect the hero, after a frightful and agonising death, secutions of the young and old of a certain class, his life |