to the Bengal Civil Service, but since dead, was taken very ill with jungle fever in the north-west, and was recommended to proceed down the Indus, and so, viâ Kurrachie and Bombay, to England. I obtained leave to accompany him to the western presidency, and see him safe on board the steamer for Suez. But by the time we arrived in Bombay he felt so much better, that he resolved not to lose his Indian allowances by going home, but to try whether he could not restore himself to health by a sea voyage to China. I wrote to my regiment, and obtained leave again to go on with him to Singapore, where, if better, he would proceed on to Hong-Kong, and I would return to Calcutta. If not recovered, he was to go round with me to the City of Palaces, and there take a passage round the Cape to Europe, as the medical men in Bombay appeared all of opinion that nothing would do him so much good as a long sea voyage. We left Bombay in a sailing vessel, an opium clipper belonging to one of the great Parsee firms. There were four or five other passengers on board, and among them a young officer who had lately exchanged from one of her Majesty's regiments in Bombay to another corps in Australia, and was on his way to China, where he hoped to find some vessel bound to Melbourne. Our ship was a very comfortable vessel, well found in everything, but all the way down the coast we had the most extraordinary light winds, and often calms, which made the voyage extremely tedious. We had been just a fortnight at sea, were out of sight of land, had not touched anywhere, nor had we communicated with any other ship, when the young officer of whom I have spoken was one night taken extremely ill, and the two medical men we had on board—one being the surgeon of the ship, the other a doctor belonging to the Madras army—at once declared him to be suffering from a very bad attack of Asiatic cholera. He lived about twenty-four hours, and then died from exhaustion. The doctors did all they could for him, but almost from the very first his case was declared by them both to be hopeless. It may be easily imagined that even the most courageous amongst us were not a little frightened at what had happened, and fully expected that others would fall victims to the same complaint. The crew of the vessel consisted of native Lascars, the captain and chief officer only being Englishmen, as is usual in ships employed on what is called "the country trade." The day after the young Englishman died, three Lascars were taken ill; of these, one died and two recovered. After that, we had not a single case in the ship, and everybody on board enjoyed the most perfect health until we arrived at our destination some three weeks later.

The time spent at the two stations has not been lost, for it is now only half-past ten, and the opium revels are seldom at their height before eleven. There is no limit to the variety of nationalities patronising the wretched hovel we are about to visit. From every quarter of the globe, and more immediately from every district in London, men come to old Yahee: the sole bond between them being a love of opium and a partiality for Yahee's brand. Sailors, stewards, shopmen, mountebanks, beggars, outcasts

There is a little colony of Orientals in the centre of Bluegate-fields, and in the centre of this colony is the opium divan. We reach it by a narrow passage leading up a narrow court, and easily gain admission on presenting ourselves at its door. Yahee is of great age, is never free from the influence of opium, but sings, tells stories, eats, drinks, cooks, and quarrels, and goes through the routine of his simple life, without ever rousing from the semi-comatose state you see him in now. The curious dry burning odour, which is making your eyelids quiver painfully, which is giving your temples the throbbing which so often predicates a severe headache, and which is tickling your gullet as if with a feather and fine dust, is opium. Its fumes are curling overhead, the air is laden with them, and the bed-clothes and the rags hanging on the string above are all steeped through and through with the fascinating drug. The livid, cadaverous, corpse-like visage of Yahee, the wild excited glare of the young Lascar who opens the door, the stolid sheep-like ruminations of Lazarus and the other Chinamen coiled together on the floor, the incoherent anecdotes of the Bengalee squatted on the bed, the fiery gesticulations of the mulatto and the Manilla-man who are in conversation by the fire, the semi-idiotic jabber of the negroes huddled up behind Yahee, are all due to the same fumes. As soon as we are sufficiently acclimatised to peer through the smoke, and after the bearded Oriental who makes faces and passes jibes at, and for the company, has lighted a small candle in our honour, we see a sorry little apartment, which is almost filled by the French bedstead, on which half a dozen coloured men are coiled long-wise across its breadth, and in the centre of which is a common japan tray and opium lamp. Turn which way you will, you see or touch opium smokers. The cramped little chamber is one large opium-pipe, and inhaling its atmosphere partially brings you under the pipe's influence. Swarthy sombre faces loom out of dark corners, until the whole place seems alive with humanity; and turning to your guides you ask, with strange puzzlement, who Yahee's customers are, where they live, and how they obtain the wherewithal for the expensive luxury of opium smoking? But Booboo on the bed there is too quick for you, and, starting up, shouts out, with a volubility which is astounding, considering his half-dead condition a few seconds before, full particulars concerning himself, his past, his future, and the grievance he unjustly labours under now. First, though, of the drug he smokes. "You see, sar, this much opium, dam him, smoke two minutes, sar—no more. Him cost four pennies—him dam dear, but him dam good. No get opium at de Home, sar (the Home for Asiatics); so come to Yahee for small drunk, den go again to Home and sleep him, sar. Yes, me live at de Home, sar— me ship's steward—Bengalee—no get opium good as dis, except to Yahee, sar. Four pennies, you und'stand, make smoke two minutes, no more; but him make better drunk as tree, four, five glasses rum—you Inglesee like rum drunk, me Bengalee like opium drunk, you und'stand—try him, sar; he much good."

WITH OPIUM TO HONG-KONG.

the microscope swarms with life. Perhaps he resolves to kill himself and end all by one quick movement of the knife, one leap from a window on the paving-stones, or a savage rush with teeth and hands at the keeper. One morning the madman will awake as from an opium dream. A great calm has fallen upon his mind; the waves are still; the sky is blue and serene; the vision is coming down—a broad beam of sunshine slants from the grated window to his bed. He leaps up and looks. Yes, yes! There, in the sun, stands the angel of Revelations, with the book in his hand, and the voice comes proclaiming John Thom a prophet of the Lord, sent through the world to lower the price of bread, and to work wonders, by fire and sword, until the unbelieving turn to him and acknowledge him as the chosen of Heaven. Nothing can shake this man now. He is the chosen prophet, and when the angels touch the doors they will open.

The early alchemists obtained a great knowledge of the properties of natural objects by their ceaseless and prolonged experiments. It was they who discovered alcohol: that mingled curse and blessing. They first taught us the use of mineral medicines. Basil Valentine devoted half his adventurous life to the study of the medicinal properties of antimony. Paracelsus brought from the East opium, the pain-killer, in all its compounds. It was an alchemist who discovered phosphorus. Lastly, it was Van Helmont, an alchemist, who first analysed atmospheric air, and discovered that it is composed of gases. In the Spa waters of Germany he first observed carbonic acid gas, and learned to distinguish it as a distinct elastic aëriform substance to be elicited only by chemical decomposition, and considering it as more of an essence than common atmospheric air, he gave it the German name of Gheist (ghost or spirit), from whence comes our English word gas. This great discovery dates about 1624.

It was late when Mellen finished his tale. Two bells (one A.M.) had struck. I bade my friends good night, roused out my "Celestial" mariners from the opium-pipes and good cheer with which the crew of the lorcha had supplied them, and returned to my own vessel.

I told him of the experiment with the opium, and of what had occurred afterwards at the bank in Lombard Street. He was greatly struck by the experiment—it was something entirely new in his experience. And he was particularly interested in the theory of Ezra Jennings, relating to what I had done with the Diamond, after I had left Rachel's sitting-room, on the birthday night.

Remembering the severity with which he had been punished at school, he forbids any one to beat a child who is under five years of age, and after that age he enjoins that he should be chastised with gentleness. He warns parents to consider the health of their children as much as their education, and adds, with true affection for them, "allow them all that can make them happy." He orders his disciples not to overwork or overburden the animals they employ. The true believer is to be charitable and indulgent to others, and not to be too severe with himself; fasting and other trials of endurance are forbidden him after the age of forty-two, and long and distant journeys are to be avoided. His virtues are to be, so to say, every-day virtues — not heroic virtues, which require to be brought forth by extraordinary circumstances. All that can render life agreeable and increase his gratitude to his Creator, is allowed to the true believer, so long as he does nothing which can injure him; but opium and fermented liquors are forbidden. The Bâb and his eighteen colleagues hold almost all the property of the society, and have the right to levy very heavy taxes. With the money thus collected they are able to maintain the priests, keep up the religious buildings, assist the poor, alleviate distress, and educate the faithful. There is not much originality in this system, and its dogmas are chiefly borrowed from ancient systems. Its morality is even below that of the Stoics. Its ideal city is an Utopia, which would infallibly degenerate into a despotism. Its most original feature is the principle of the permanent incarnation of the Deity in a body of nineteen persons. It is, however, so much more imaginative, more liberal, and more enlightened than Islamism; and it has done so much good by abolishing polygamy and raising the status of women, that it possesses advantages over it which make it a formidable rival, destined, perhaps, some day to