parents and baby and little brothers in the parsonage garden, and learning there, surely, the loving ways and sympathy that will make them afterwards feel kindly to young children, and bend their thoughts to enrich their minds. And then the only very prominent figure among the group is Elizabeth Vassall, Lady Holland, in a vast upright black velvet bonnet, a strip of a brighthued scarf, barrel curls, and a sleek black satin dress. She is the very My Lady who, the English Bard says, to help the Scotch Reviewers,

skims the cream of each critique, Breathes o'er the page her purity of soul, Reforms each error, and refines the whole;

and she has such a bevy of wits and poets
and politicians round her—all fresh ar-
rivals, and all eagerly pressing in
ought to take breath before presenting our-
selves to be introduced.

-we

"Don't forget thy poor Hindoo!" and yet the day when we are narrowed into two), is paying all attention to her brisk and to have the goodness to marry her to bustling painter-husband, the earnest man somebody more of a gentleman than a Diswho, when he was asked how he mixed his dar Aga." colours, cried out "With my brains!" lor, of" Who fed me on her gentle breast," Then come Ann and Jane TayThe second i Hannah More. She is dining and other tender infant rhymings. They at Widow Garrick and is hiding her are tiny girls yet themselves, in white muslaughing face behind the back of a lady sit-lin frocks and pink sashes, playing with ting on the same settee, because Johnson has uttered an unconscious equivoque, and it has made everybody titter, and himself in a solemn rage. The third is Sarah Kirby, Mrs. Trimmer. She looks beautiful; she has silver hair, a rosy face, and clear brown eyes; and her muslin-kerchiefed bosom is so neat and matronly, many more than the dozen children she gave birth to might be nestled there, and find it sweet consolation. Not far from her (being the fourth lady on the list) is her Majesty Queen Caroline. Cobbett has just dedicated his English Grammar" to her (there he is! see! reckoning up one hundred and sixty-nine and a doubtful one, of the two hundred grammatical errors he is detecting in Johnson's "Lives of the Poets "), and he has told her she is the only one amongst all the royal personages of the age who has justly estimated the value of the people." He says more. He entreats her not to be uneasy at the sayings of her enemies, for they have It is a hard matter, though, to keep away. "an absence of knowledge, a poverty of Amid such a goodly throng, it is impossible, genius, a feebleness of intellect, which noth-indeed, to withhold a greeting. One of the ing but a constant association with malevo-visitors chatters out something about "the lence and perfidy could prevent from being sheep-bells' tinkling tattle," ascribed to dotage or idiocy." The fifth runnels' gurgling rattle," and we know it and small lady, immediately next Her Most Gracious is Horace Smith, of the "Rejected AdMajesty, is Fanny Burney, Madame D'Arblay. She wears her wide hat, her winning smile, and has quiet crossed hands; but she uncrosses these hastily, when the poor king, her master, sees her walking in Windsor Park, and sets to running after her; she runs then, and the physicians run after him, and there is a whole set of runners, through the trees and across the glades, till she is come up with, and the king embraces her, and after a chat on things that have been his habit, finds his poor madness that much relieved, and the physicians assure her there is no occasion to be afraid. The sixth lady is Mary Russell Mitford. She is writing, Sweet is the balmy evening hour;" and she looks as if her evening were balmy, and its hour sweet too. Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, is within a few seats of her. She is very jewelled and belaced and modish, and is being quizzed by Lord Byron unmercifully; he is beseeching her" when next she borrows an Athenian heroine for her four volumes," (we have

66

dresses," and as he is a wag, we must pass a jest with him. Another exclaims, "Oh dear! in this heat one would like to take off one's flesh, and sit in one's bones!" and seeing a fine man with plenty of flesh to make a riddance of, we recognize another Smith, Sydney, and cannot decline being roused up to a laugh. Somebody else cries, Mind, whom you are touching, man! and he hiccoughs, he is in the gutter, Lift me gently!" for Wilberforce!" and as it is poor dunned know, man, that I am Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with wit thus sparkling in the debasement of intoxication, our restoration is complete, and we go on again with spirit and strength renewed. We give a hand to Wordsworth, breaking through his pensiveness to cry,

66

46

Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up, up, my friend, and quit your books,
Or, surely, you'll grow double!

We sit for a moment by the side of a

sunk to three now, happily! and may hail | lame man, of rustic aspect and with a small

grave head; he says (seasoned with a Scotch he ought to be very slavish, and to go right accent, enough for palatable salting), "The down upon his knees, and the governor (beonly thing in nature I cannot understand is, ing a rich grocer, and priding himself upon why dogs twirl themselves round three his grand gruffness), says, pompously, "I times before lying down," and we whisper, presume, sir-I presume you want my vote "Sir Walter Scott " to the friend upon our and interest at this momentous epoch of arm, and pass impressedly on. We come your life?" And Abernethy looks for a then to Rogers, "melodious Rogers," with moment-just long enough for him to conhis wide, bald forehead, and stooping, atten- ceive the manœuvre - and cries out, "No, tive gait; we see, carving at the decorations I don't; I want a pen'north of figs! Look in his dining-room, Francis Chantrey, jour-sharp! Wrap them up, I must be off!" neyman, a guest there afterwards, under the And loses his vote, but gets elected all the very scrolls and flowers upon which he is at same, and retains his bright and bold indework, and pointing out to his convives the pendence. works of his skilful hand. We welcome Por- There is pressing forward now a lad of son (with his shaven, Napoleonic chin), and seventeen, breathless, fierce, unhappy, exwe share the start that comes when he utters cited, for he has run away from school at halfhis stinging prophecy, “Joan of Arc and past three of a July morning with an English Thalaba will be read when Homer and Vir- poet in one pocket, and Euripides in the gil are forgotten- but not till then!" And other; and he reads an English newspaper we welcome, also, Fowell Buxton, called off into Greek fluently, and he is Thomas Elephant Buxton, because he is a giant of de Quincy, and he will be homeless in Lonsix feet four inches high, and we applaud don, hungry, and in agony, sleeping at nights when he cries out heartily (being a brewer with a forlorn girl of ten, in an empty house, at his Uncle Hanbury's, as well as a great amidst the scampering of rats. Following warm philanthropist), "I can brew one him comes a weak-faced, bald-headed man, hour, do mathematics the next, and shoot very short in the mouth and chin, writing the next, and each with my whole soul!" mournfully in his diary, "Here began debt And then our hilarity dies out a little when and obligation, out of which I have never we come to the quiet, old-world Lambs been, and never shall be, extricated as long Charles and Mary-dark and graceless and as I live." It is Benjamin Robert Haydon, almost all gloom; she with a large-frilled and what he sets down is true; there is no heavy cap, and a straight-pinned woolen lightening of his distress and humiliation till shawl, offering no outward beauty as com- he bring Death to end them with his pensation to her brother for the devotion own hand. Then there arrives Coleridge, that has been hers since the fatal tragedy, and that has never ceased. Near to the Lambs are three physicians - Baillie, Astley Cooper, and Abernethy. They are smooth, and sober, and serious, all; for they are listening to the maladies of the company, and feeling their pulses, and looking at their tongues, and they know why one is bilious, and another choleric, and what mad freaks of diet have upset all the rest; but in private they will lash out their learned opinions of their profession in their own characteristic way. Baillie says, and he says it with a sigh, as he turns uneasily on his sick bed, "I wish I could be sure that I have not killed more than I have cured!" Sir Astley Cooper declares, "The science of medicine is founded on Can none remember that eventful day, conjecture, and improved by murder ;" and That ever-glorious, almost fatal fray, John Abernethy blurts dryly, for he knows When Little's leadless bullet met his eye, there is something funny coming, "There And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by? has been a great increase of medical men and bowing in Francis Jeffrey of late years, but upon my life, diseases - he proposes have increased in proportion!" And Abernethy visits one of the governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital to ask for his vote to elect him surgeon. It is supposed that

saying;

There came and look'd him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright,
And that he knew it was a fiend,
This miserable knight !

And more than one among the company
whisper that a fiend has come to visit him,
and that, like his own conception, it is only
beautiful as long as he can thrust it back
and keep it from seizing him beyond his
own control. And then there is a renewed
burst of merriment, and the next visitors
are being talked of in a very different
strain. Byron is the spokesman. He
cries:

upright, keen, kind

aware,

Health to great Jeffrey! Heaven preserve his life,

To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife!

Though myself may be the next,
By critic sarcasm to be vexed,

I really will not fight them!

He calls out, Moore! Harmonious favour- | ing-irons," and "gibbets," as he reads a ite of the Nine! the critic's Little adversary recent publication of the laureate's, in which and he laughs: his name is mentioned with anything but praise. Byron is greatly disconcerted, but he goes on with his work. He brings forward, with a line or epithet for each, Canning, Sotheby, Dibdin, Hook, Montgommore kindly mention, Leigh Hunt, Colman, Shelley, Keats; and then he points to John Murray and Thomas Norton Longman, calmly looking at the whole. They seem suave, deliberate (Mr. Murray has, even at this moment, some MSS. in his hand); and it is odd to think how much depends on their decision, and how many of their fellow-company, who are now calmly sitting with them, have trembled often under their sharp but kindly scrutiny, because on them their sale or their suppression depends.

66

and Tom, pert and spruce and very aspir-ery, Strangford, Hallam, Hoare, and with ing, appears on the bridge with him at Venice, and begins of the stars and waters and pale, placid moon. Byron stops him. it, Moore!" he cries, "don't be poetical!" and Moore comes in with a grin instead of a wrapt glance at heaven, and is just as happy as if it had been the other way. Byron resumes his rôle:

Come forth, oh Campbell! give thy talents scope, Who dares aspire, if thou must cease to hope? and the Scotch minstrel, entering, thanks him for saying Camel instead of Campbell, because that is how it is sounded the north side of the Tweed, and it is pleasant to his Byron cries:

ears.

Why slumbers Gifford?

Arouse thee, Gifford! Be thy promise claim'd!
Make bad man better, or at least ashamed!

are

crowd distinct. Some belong to the fading Other forms and faces yet stand from the past; others are so near the present the echo of their voices is still about us, and we cannot mention their names lightly, knowing there is no hearing them any more. We look at all; at Gray, Grattan, Reynolds, and Gifford, coming straight from Hatch- Burke, Godwin; at Lockhart, Wilson, Benard's shop in Piccadilly (then Wright's), tham, Hazlitt, Hogg; at Talfourd, Hood, turns his nice face to us for nice it is, al- Praed, Macaulay; and at Leech, and Thackthough it is thrown back a little, and is full eray, and Prince Consort, and Mrs. Brownabout the neck, as if he were in the sulks—ing, and Charlotte Brontë: and we and apologizes for coming to us a little bit perturbed. He was standing in the shop, he says, when suddenly Wolcot (Peter Pindar) aimed a cudgel at his head for a lampoon, and it would have hit him if a bystander had not stepped in promptly; and, Gifford adds, his dress is in the disorder that we see, because he and the gentleman have just been rolling the assailant in the mud! The next person Byron introduces is Southey. He says:

forced to turn away. Are they all dead! is our cry. Must Death be the certificate they cannot be without before they can get admission here? And we know it is. We know their grouping has been no reality; has only been a semblance of the life that can never more return! It is over; it is done. But as the light that has shown them to us fades out, as the gallery is cleared, as the blinds are drawn, as the last foot lingers, and the last look is turned reluctanctly away, we think there might be a record of their meeting, and it stands here now. They have been re-scattered once more, some time; they have been re-sent hither, thither, wide and near; but this in memory of their gathering—this as witness that it has really taken place. Good-bye and he calls him an 66 arrogant scribbler-of- to our pleasant guests. Good-bye to them all-work," and mutters" whips," and brand-one and all.

The varlet was not an ill-favoured knave;

A good deal like a vulture in the face, With a hook-nose, and a hawk's eye, which gave

A swart and sharper-looking sort of grace To his whole aspect;

On the 12th of March, the Hougli, one of the | ing traversed the Suez Canal without encounlargest of the packet-boats belonging to the Messageries Imperiales, of 2,000 tons burden and 500 horse power, entered the quarantine port of Frioul direct from the China seas, hav

tering the slightest obstacle. The cargo consieted of 1,300 bales of silk, 300 chests of tea, and other valuable freight, and there were in addition seventy passengers.

From The Cornhill Magazine. A CHINESE COMMISSIONER'S FOREIGN TOUR.

two li* brought us to Taku, where the forts, on either side of the river, present an imposing appearance, as befits the gateway of the Northern Sea. Passed Taku about eight o'clock, but the bar just below proved an impediment to further progress. The steamer was compelled to wait for high water at 1 P.M., when we were at length able to proceed. The foreigners used an iron weight for ascertaining the depth of water; and in little more than an hour there were eighteen or nineteen feet at the top of the tide, thus enabling us to go on without farther impediment.

IN the spring of 1866 the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave permission to one of the writers connected with that department to accompany the principal foreign employés in their service on a tour through Europe, with instructions to report upon the condition and aspect of the various countries he should visit. Pin-ch'un, the person thus selected, was a man advanced in years, but having been employed as a writer in the Foreign Inspectorate of Customs, he was less apprehensive of the dan- 17th. In the afternoon the wind ingers arising from travel and from unre- creased to a gale, and we were much tossed stricted intercourse with Europeans than the about. Half of those on board were sick. majority of his lettered countrymen. The Towards night the wind still further ininterest which was manifested by fashionable creased, and the rolling and pitching grew society in London and Paris during the summer of 1866, on the appearance of the pig-tailed commissioner and his suite, will be remembered by many of the readers of these pages.

Pin-ch'un returned, and presented his report to the Chinese Foreign Office, by whom his exertions were rewarded, it is understood, with a post of some kind in connection with the school of languages. His report has not been made public, and the diary of his travels, in which his experiences were recorded from day to day, has been allowed to circulate in manuscript only. A translation of some portions of this record is now laid before the public. It has been faithfully rendered from the original Chinese, and may be found interesting, if only as a quaint representation of familiar sights and scenes regarded from the point of view of a stranger from the farthest and darkest extremity of Asia.

On the 22nd of February, 1866 (the eighth day of the first moon in the Chinese year), I, Pin-ch'un, Assistant Head-clerk in the Board of Foreign Affairs at Peking, bearing by honorary licence the button of the third official degree, received instructions from the Board of Foreign Affairs, notifying that I had been honoured by imperial commands to travel in the countries of the West, and enjoining that I should compile an accurate record concerning the lands I should visit, and prepare maps (or drawings) with explanatory notes upon the natural features of the same, their condition, climate, and national usages, and bring back the said documents to China, to be put in print for future reference.

13th. Engaged passage on board the Ying-tsze-fei, which sails to-morrow. 15th. Got under way at daybreak. Forty

765

worse.

- one vast ex

18th. The wind gradually fell. Went up into the pilot-house, and took a view around the entire horizon panse of sea and sky, a waste of billows without limit in any direction. Many miles off there was a faint thread of smoke to be seen, about two or three inches long. This was pronounced by the captain, after looking at it through a telescope, to be a threemasted steamer. From Taku to this point we have traversed 2,000 li of water, and have seen but this one vessel - a proof that it is no light matter to navigate the seas! 6 P.M. the wind ceased, and we caught sight for the first time of the new moon. In the evening a fog came on, and the vessel was hove to. From Yen-tai to this point we have made 1,500 li.

At

19th. Shortly before 6 A.M. the fog lifted; whereupon the anchor was got up, and we proceeded on our way. At 8 A.M. passed Sha-wei Island, and here shifted our course to N.W.† About ten o'clock sighted the entrance to Wusung. From Sha-wei Island to the entrance it is 240 li, the whole of which distance lies within the waters of the Yang-tsze-kiang.

A distance of forty li from the entrance (at Wusung) brought us to Shanghai. Both banks of the river Hwang-plu are lined with foreign houses, densely packed together; whilst the view presented by the concourse of sailing-ships and steamers of all sizes is that of an actual forest. The place may well be called the grand emporium for the foreigners of all the seventeen countries of the West.

23rd. A beautiful day. At 1 P.M. went