Upon other cries got up against him, there came, as a climax, terrible tales of the massacre of feeble pirates in March and in July eighteen hundred and forty-nine. The details were terrible enough. We shrink from their repetition; but to make matters worse it was so stoutly argued that a great number of the victims were no pirates at all, that a Commission of Inquiry was obtained, and it was only by its decision that Sir James Brooke's character was finally and fairly cleared. It was truly among pirates that the havoc had been made. One of the earliest determinations that had been expressed by the English Rajah of Saráwak, was, that he would put an end to the piracy that was the ruin of the Eastern seas. The government, by its active assent in the form of ships of war, supported him in this effort, and the evil is not to be laid to his charge if he was supported also by a British regulation for the suppression of piracy all over the globe, which made the wholesale destruction of Malay pirate crews a gold mine to the sailor, and stimulated in him an unholy thirst for blood. There was a prize of twenty pounds on every pirate killed or taken, five pounds on every one attacked without being captured or destroyed. At what rate English seamen suddenly betook themselves to the working of the pirate mine in the seas round about Borneo may be seen from this return made to the House of Commons. The average yearly payment for pirates' head money from the year eighteen hundred and twenty-five to the year eighteen hundred and forty- eight—that is, for fourteen years—had been sixteen hundred and twenty-seven pounds. But in the single session of eighteen hundred and fifty the vote on this account was for no less than one hundred and six thousand four hundred and forty pounds, chiefly for killing Dyaks. For the single night affair of the thirty-first of July, the head-money came to twenty thousand seven hundred pounds. Head-money was at once abolished, and we have since heard little more about suppressing pirates in the Eastern seas.

almost filled with English, French, and American ships—one beautiful American vessel, the Sea Serpent, commanding universal admiration—and a shoal of tankas and san-pans are covering the water, plying small floating trades. " San- pan" means three planks, of which they make a boat something like a long coffin. One merchant paddles about in this, and sells soup, or macaroni, or needles and thread; and announces his approach by rattling a small drum filled with peas, as good a thing to frighten a horse with as can be conceived, but finding no such use hereabouts. I have a short time to pay a visit to Captain Heath, who is lying here in the Assistance screw steam store-ship of four hundred horse power, and who, with no chance of being in action up here, and with nothing particularly amusing in the neighbourhood, must have felt as dull as the people in Cheltenham on a wet Good Friday. Then, for a few minutes, to see Mr. Cooper, who made the docks at Whampoa, built the Fei-maa in them, and is Captain Castella's brother-in-law. He lives in a "chop"—a floating house like a two-storied City barge, but larger—with his family. His poor father was murdered by the Chinese the year before last. They came alongside, in a many-oared boat, and said they had a letter for him. He went down the ladder to receive it, when they pulled him into the boat, rowed off with him, under the guns of the English ships, and, it is supposed, beheaded him up one of the piratical creeks of the river, and got their blood money from Yeh. Yey, again, the illustrious exile who is now enjoying his luxurious opium cum dignitate at Calcutta, and will, no doubt, be a lion next season in Belgravia, as other odoriferous Eastern ruffians and murderers, and swindling scamps generally, have been before him. Are not these names chronicled "among the distinguished individuals present we observed" in the interesting lists of the fêtes in fashionable papers, from Jumjawbudda Jaggerbedamjee, whose presence so enlivened the déjeûner of Mrs. Brown, of Pantile, down to Sir Underdown Whiffle, Bart., whose name, as noticed at the Opera last night, must have so influential an effect upon the future let for the season?

Gout has never enjoyed a high reputation for putting money into the pockets of medical men. Patent medicine vendors have made a better thing by it than regular practitioners. People who have once done business with gout, soon discover that (except in the case of unusually violent crises which must be met by unusual expedients) it is a mere matter of routine and long-suffering. A little domestic medicine, a little regimen, a good deal of patience, hot baths topical and general, hot diluent drinks, encouragements to action of the skin—that is all you can do, except going to bed and abiding your time. Order to be civilly shown to the door any counsellors who would advise you to put a sudden check on gout. It is far more dangerous than bridling or saddling the wildest horse of the steppes. " Tell your papa, my dear," said a sage adviser to a listening child, " the next time he feels an attack coming on, to walk down to the seaside before breakfast, to pull off his shoes and stockings there, and to wade at the water's edge for half an hour." If the counsellor wished to see his patient thunderstricken with gout in the head, he could not have given more likely advice. "My dear sir," said a Lady Benevolent, "I know a lotion that will cure you directly. I will undertake to set you on your legs by tomorrow morning." The foolish man consented to the experiment. He was on his legs the next day morning. And all the rest of his life he was a martyr to the sufferings of latent, suppressed, and smouldering gout, which never could break out into one good honest blaze.

All discoveries do not bring fortunes to the discoverer. Fame comes; but, when the money should flow in, there is a hitch, a frost, a blight. M. Schönbein, the German country usher, discovered gun cotton, but now it is used only for blasting; but there is chloroform, that great gift of Heaven and blessing to mankind. The same alchemist who discovered gin and water discovered the more useful phosphorus, to which we partly owe the comfort of lucifer-matches.

The correspondent is very anxious, the writer very grave and consequential, the gossip very deferential and attentive. Before the writer are a small box of paper, reed-pens, pen-cases, inks, and seals; his chibouk has gone out, negIected in the hurry of business. The three men represent three types of Turks; the one, a bigoted, dull, day-dreamer; the letter-sender, a mean, puzzled, opium-eating knave; the centre man, a full-brained, but sorrowful, simple-hearted, honest Mussulman. He looks quite the pasha with his yellow turban, red fez, light-coloured robe, and blue-striped inner dress; the gossip, with broad red sash and purple robe, is the thorough old Turk; the correspondent is a feeble, miserable mixture of European and Asiatic dress— flapping, buttonless waistcoat, and trousers of dirty grey plaid silk. What it was that wise Abdallah wrote— whether news of hope or sorrow, of birth or death, of joy or grief — I shall never know; it has gone, like the great river of events that flows by daily. Be sure, however, that if of joy or grief, it ended with some pious ejaculation, as, "It is ordained," or, " It is decreed by Allah."

they are lower, indeed, than those of a common Lascar; and the Chinaman is more easily fed and satisfied than the dark-skinned Hindoo, while in robust make and muscular power he is far superior. Indeed, he is not at all worse than the Krooman of Western Africa, who is justly valued. I could often have fancied, while watching a gang of sturdy Chinese hauling at a rope, that I was observing Dutch or Danish sailors at their work. There is the same muscular power, the same solidity of build, and the same apparent relish of exertion—a rare thing in Asiatics. European seamen desert to get work in smugglers, in the schooners and tug-boats belonging to native merchants, and so forth, and are preferred by the native employers because they can fight. The Chinese sailor will not fight for his countrymen, yet he will work for his countrymen, and for his countrymen only! This is a very curious fact. I have repeatedly inquired of English and American mates and masters, why the robust and money-loving Chinese could not be made at least as useful as the effeminate Lascars, who compose a great part of every Indiaman's crew, and who are managed through native serangs. The answer always has been, "The Chinamen won't work for us." And yet how heartily the Coolies work for English cash, on shore! If Chinamen work for the money of the foreign devils when ashore, why not afloat: Fear of mutiny may make our merchant captains less eager to have a Celestial ship's company, and certainly such fear has grounds. The Chinaman, whose pay is but a string of copper sapecks, and whose rations are a mess of rice and oil, would be invaluable, if he could be trusted to keep out of conspiracies and do his fair share of the work. Severity fails to compel obedience. A Yankee skipper, who was going to return to Boston short-handed, gave me a hint on this score, when I asked him why he did not hire Chinese. After suggestion of the certainty of throat-cutting on the high seas, unless he and his mates had an eye always on the Mongolian part of the crew, the worthy skipper came to the wilful idling, and closed with the provoking hopelessness of the case, "For," he said, "if you lambast the critters, it is a fact, they'll drown theirselves jist to spite you." The phrase is hardly an exaggeration, such is the recklessness of life in this strange prayerless race, and such the frequency of suicide among the lower class on what we should call light provocation. There always are Chinese on board the opium vessels, but there, too, they carry out the strange doctrine of working only for Chinamen, and fighting only for Europeans. They ship as cooks, pilots, canoe-men, and so forth, but do not help in the regular duty of working the vessel. Yet, when a brush occurs between an imperial junk and one of these fleet smugglers, the sleek-skinned subjects of the emperor assist with hearty good will to run out and point the guns which are to fling grape and round shot among the crews of the mandarin boat.

Yet the amount of work done on this spare diet is great. A single man's entire expenses, when living as above described, are eight or nine pounds a year, including rent, clothing, and luxuries. This sum will keep a man of the lowest respectable class of a hard-working industrious population, without, forbidding him such luxuries as a drink of wine at feast times, and an occasional spread of fruits and sweetmeats. But he must avoid gambling, drinking, or opium-smoking vices which are too common among town coolies, but do not prevail much among the peasantry. The addition of another four or five pounds a year would make this income large enough to support a wife and family. Some are obliged to be content with a cheap sort of potato.

The chiefs of the Triad society, whose purpose was the restoration of the Ming dynasty and the expulsion of the Tartars, thought it wise to support the rebel chief. Sin-tshuen bade them welcome if they would worship as he did. This they would do, they said; and sent in their bribes in victuals. The prophet sent them sixteen preachers of the new doctrine. After this the eight chiefs of the Triad society, with their troops, joined in the growing strife. Fifteen of the preachers had all the money given them by their disciples paid into the common purse, as the law would have it; but one of them kept it for himself. He sold arms belonging to the commune to buy opium. He was drunk, and had wounded some brethren. He was decapitated.

it is the custom of the country, which the planter did not invent, and to which he unwillingly yields. The system is common all over India, where you can scarcely get a native to make even a pair of boots without giving him an advance. It is one which the government themselves are compelled to adopt in the opium and salt manufactures—both of which are monopolies in India—though it must be said that the system in the case of the government does not lead to such disastrous results, as they take care to reserve to themselves the remedy which they deny to the indigo planters, and to enforce the fulfilment of their contracts by summary process. Moreover, the planters' advances, sometimes reinforced by additional loans, are made without any interest whatever, and however large the arrears may accrue, a case has never been known in which the planter has sued the ryot for their recovery. Yet these arrears extend over years of time and hundreds of rupees, which are so much money sunk as effectually as if cast into the Bay of Bengal. The native zemindars and usurers, on the other hand, when they make loans and advances, sell up the poor man without mercy; his bullocks, and his extremely little all, are ruthlessly seized and disposed of, and he is fortunate if he finds himself able to "take up his bed and walk" to some more promising district—that light but necessary article of furniture being most frequently sent the way of the rest of his chattels, if he happen to have any others.

This was one of the smallest of the cruelties inflicted, which, though they did not directly affect life, were harder to be borne than torture of a more severe kind, inasmuch as they were incessant. The entrance of any person inspired the dread that some of us would be certain to suffer before he left the apartment—a dread which events seldom failed to realise. On the seventh day of our imprisonment one of our number was carried out, and the rest were reduced to such a condition that it seemed impossible we could live much longer. For the first time I then learnt the blessing opium can be to a man in extremity, and the secret of the passive endurance a Chinese will exhibit under the most painful tortures. Where the means of purchasing the drug came from, I know not— possibly the opium itself was sent by friends at Tyhan, who bribed an assistant of the jailer to deliver it to us, or we should not have had it in such abundance; the charge for it made by the jailer, or the mandarins under whom he acts, being enormous. This is the only real consolation a Chinese has in such circumstances, Religion having scarcely any hold upon him.

"I could not tell you, Bessie," said Felicia, sadly, "when all your letters were looked at at school. But we were obliged to have a sale to pay our debts; and there are no boys now but the foundationers; and my father, Pim says, is getting on with his book. During my absence as a governess to the children of Colonel Clarke"—here my sister unaccountably checked herself—"he sunk deeper into the fatal habit of opium-eating, and now he is so great a slave to it that the instruction of the few poor burgesses' sons who came to school, devolve upon me. Our affairs were bad enough when you went, if you had been old enough to notice. And now, dear, we are very poor, and very lonely."

"What a lot of questions you ask! I'm not his godfathers and his godmothers. I believe he sold out after the peace, and went to India to grow indigo, or buy opium, or shake the pagoda- tree, or something of that sort. Well, he came back, and he's been on town these ten years; at least, I've known him ever since I came up from Oxford."

THERE is an awful state of things in India just now. People are making more money than there is money to make, and payment is becoming impossible. This, I believe, is the real meaning of the " commercial crisis " which has for some time past been threatened in the three presidencies. Trade never was in such a flourishing condition. Given, a pretext of any kind of plausibility, and a capitalist is at hand. You need not go for him to business haunts. He may be found anywhere—in clubs or hotels, encountered at street corners, or picked up at the band. Opium, tea, cotton, castor oil— native produce of all kinds, even to unfortunate indigo—nothing comes amiss to him. "Europe goods," for whose numbers legion is no name, find speculators equally abundant. And such has been the high pressure of transactions for many months past, that an explosion would have been inevitable long since, but for the safety- valve of that glorious invention—limited liability. During the past year limited liability has been quinine, cooling diet, and ice to the head of the commercial fever. Companies accordingly have been formed for every conceivable purpose— to develop resources or to create them: to supply existing requirements or to make wants nobody ever thought of by providing means for their gratification. Old worlds of speculation, in fact, have been exhausted, and new ones imagined, simply because men must find something to do with their money. As a last resort, the private business of individuals has been turned into " fields," wherein hundreds could find space for kicking up their superfluous heels. Your tailor, whom you have hitherto treated as an individual, sends you in your new bill, and your old one too, it may be, not to mention your middle-aged one, as " The Asiatic Clothing Company, limited," and instead of one creditor you find you have five hundred, with a collective capacity to be paid which there is no resisting. Your bootmaker—in whose small account are some trifling items for saddles and silver-mounted harnesses— develops in a similar manner, and " The Cape Comorin and Himalaya Leather Company, limited," reminds you of your past liability and solicits future favours. The livery-stable where buggies and horses are let out to the vehicleless and studless ensign, expands in a similar manner; and the other day there were in Calcutta companies to supply every possible want of the public, even to the cutting of your hair and the shaving of your chin.

But let us stop for a moment to say that the history of men's tails in China is instructive and entertaining. They were forced upon the Chinese by the conquering Manchoos more than two hundred years ago, and, from being the mark and evidence of subjugation, have become the most cherished of personal possessions. The care and culture of the cue is the daily concern and the constant amusement of the whole nation. The man is the object of envy whose tail touches the ground, and it is intertwined with gay ribbons, while the black tressed hair is as glossy as the back of a raven. A labourer guards his tail with as much pride as a lord, and when engaged in any occupation which may tend to its disarrangement, he twists it round his head. But no servant dares to present himself before his master unless his tail hangs down perpendicularly outside his long robes. A handsome gentleman's cue is as much an object of attraction to a Chinese lady, as is the smallness of the crushed foot of a lady to a Chinese lover. One of the sports of the Chinese is to tie their companions together by the tails, the untying being sometimes difficult enough for the exercise of the science of a Davenport. But ihe tail is a grand instrument in the hands of the police, and often leads to the capture and safe keeping of a misdoer. We possess a splendid tail upon which hangs a tale worth telling. There was a burglar of Hong-Kong, greatly distinguished in his profession, the planner of most of the housebreakings that took place in the colony. He was discovered, sent to prison, and, as some security for the future, and a fit punishment for the past, he was deprived of his cue. He had so much influence, and so much money, that he was (probably with the cognisance of his bribed keepers) carried away in a sedan-chair by his confederates while passing with the chaingang through a street in Hong- Kong. Burglaries on a large scale soon disturbed the public peace, and the convict was again captured and sentenced to imprisonment ; but he escaped a second time with the man to whom he was chained, having no doubt arranged the matter with those who had him in custody. Burglaries were again rife, and we well knew by whom they were planned, and by whose agents they were executed. But he was so well served, and so well concealed, that for some time all researches were vain, and the felonious operations were carried on uninterruptedly. One day a little boy, who had been imprisoned for some small offence, sent a message to the governor, saying that, if pardoned, he, being acquainted with the haunts of the felon, would put the police on his track, and enable them to capture him. He led them to a large house, where a gentleman was sitting, handsomely clad, and with a beautiful unexceptionable tail. " That is your man," said the boy. " Impossible," was the reply ; " the rogue's tail is in the jail !" Reassured, the policemen sprang upon the hero, seized his cue, upon which the thief jumped out of the window, leaving a false cue in its captor's hand. No dignitary was ever adorned with a less objectionable pien- tze. These false tails are often suspended for sale in barbers' shops, not always for the use of the thieving fraternity, for as old age and exposure diminish the thickness of the chevelure, the Chinese hairdresser is sometimes called on to perform restorative functions somewhat resembling those of the former wig-maker in England. The cutting off of hair in China is equivalent to an abandonment of the world. In our Catholic nunneries it is the final act, performed by others, and deemed the most interesting evidence of the devotion of the young novitiate to the conventual life. In China it is a self- infliction ; it is not unusual for a bride who has been disappointed in the character, or has suspected the fidelity of a bridegroom, to cut off her hair, and send it as a token that she contemplates suicide, which, indeed, is in China a very common refuge for misery. The plebeian mode of destruction is ordinarily opium, the

On the fourth day, the caravan reached Firazkah, at the foot of a mountain crowned by an ancient fortification. There begins the province Mazendran. Next day, after three or four hours' journey, they reached the mouth of the great defile properly called Mazendran, luxuriant with the magnificent green of primeval forests. This defile leads to the shores of the Caspian; where it ends, on the northern side, immense woods mark the limits of the Caspian shore. Here, at the night-halt in a forest of box-wood, two tigers were disturbed at the spring by the young people who went to fetch water. As for the jackals, they were so numerous and fearless, that, all night long, men had to defend with their hands and feet, their shoes and their bread-sacks. From Sari, the capital of Mazendran, horses were hired for the day's journey to the Caspian, over marshes and morasses that cannot be traversed on foot, and so, after two days' rest, the pilgrims advanced to Karatipe, by the water-side. Here Mr. Vámbéry was received with his friend Hadji Bilal in the house of an Afghan of distinction, who was himself hospitable enough; but he had in his household an Afghan scapegrace and opium- eater named Emir Mehemmed, who had seen enough of Europeans to be sure that Dervish Vámbéry was neither Turk nor Asiatic. At first this man tried to entrap the disguised Hungarian savant into travel with himself through the great desert. He had travelled, he said, for the last fifteen years to and from Khiva, and perfectly knew the country. Dervish

Who would believe that, in this respect, the French ought to take example by the people reputed the most mercantile on the face of the earth? The English, those pitiless dealers in Bibles, cotton, and opium!  The English, whom we (the French) justly regard so attached to material interests; these English strip off their usual character when the choice of a companion is in question.  A clever writer (M. Perdonnet), while sketching George Stephenson's biography, observes: "Many people will consider that he fell in love in a perilous, uncalculating, very bold, and very rash way.  In fact, he was smitten by two bright eyes which did not possess a single penny."

Gold and Cotton—thirteen millions' worth of the one, twenty millions' worth of the other; these are the mighty items which the forty-six children sent to us in one year. But there were great doings in other commodities likewise. The Australian colonies sent us wool to the value of two millions in eighteen hundred and fifty; but so rapidly did their sheep grow, and so well were they attended to, that the export more than trebled by the year 'sixty-three; while that of hides and skins multiplied seven- fold.  Go we to India; there we find that dyes, hides, skins, opium, jute, rice, saltpetre, seeds, silk, sugar, and wool, made up a magnificent total of twenty-five millions sterling—not all sent to us, certainly; for Pooh Pooh Whang Chop is the buyer of the chief item, opium. Go we to Ceylon; there we find coffee and cocoa-nut oil, the two chief items, rising nearly threefold in amount in the stated fourteen years. Go we to Canada, and the other North American colonies; there we find that the chief items sent to us are timber, dried fish, potash, corn, and flour,—treble as much in the last-named as in the first-named year. So completely fishy is Newfoundland, that all the chief articles of export smell of fish in some form or other. Look at the list:—two million cwts. of dry codfish, three hundred thousand seals (we beg pardon for calling a seal a fish, but he will paddle about in the water), three thousand tons of cod-oil (perhaps not all cod-liver), and four thousand tons of seal oil. Go we to the West Indies; there we find coffee, rum, sugar, molasses, and cocoa. The three principal islands send us a little over two millions' worth of these commodities;  but this was not such an increase beyond the year 'fifty as ought to have been exhibited, or as would have been exhibited if those islands were well managed.