marry the niece of the man that lived next | something; "I understand you, my dear door to the chapel, where they dried the sir, and feel for you, and respect you tea-leaves. She took a serious liking to greatly for your manly fortitude under me, with my navy trousers on; but I was this sad calamity. Trust in Providence, fool enough to find fault with a little kink my dear sir; as indeed I need not tell in her starboard eye. I could have car- you." ried on such a trade, with my knowledge of what people are, and description of foreign climates - however it was not to be, and I had to buy my candles. As soon as we made a fine strong light, both the gentlemen came nigh, and Sir Philip, who had said so little, even now forbore to speak. I held the poor dress, tattered by much beating on the points of rocks; and as I unrolled it slowly, he withdrew his long white hands, lest we should remark their quivering. "You are not such fools as I thought," said Stew; "it is a coronet beyond doubt. I can trace the lines and crossings, though the threads are frayed a little. And here in the corner, a moneygrumah! you never saw that, you stupes - do you know the mark, sir?" "I do not," Sir Philip answered, and seemed unable to fetch more words; and then like a strong man turned away, to hide all disappointment. Even Anthony Stew had the manners to feel that here was a sorrow beyond his de pth, and he covered his sense of it, like a gentleman, by some petty talk with me. And it made me almost respect him to find that he dropped all his banter, as out of season. But presently the tall grey gentleman recovered from his loss of hope, and with a fine brave face regarded us. And his voice was firm and very sweet. "It is not right for me to cause you pain by my anxieties; and I fear that you will condemn me for dwelling upon them overmuch. But you, Mr. Stew, already know, and you my friend have a right to know, after your kind and ready help, that it is not only the piteous loss of two little innocent children, very dear ones both of them, but also the loss of fair repute to an honourable family, and the cruel suspicion cast upon a fine brave fellow, who would scorn, sir, who would scorn for the wealth of all this kingdom, to hurt the hair of a baby's head." Here Sir Philip's voice was choked with indignation more than sorrow, and he sate down quickly, and waved his hand, as much as to say, "I am an old fool, I had much better not pretend to talk." And much as I longed to know all about it, of course it was not my place to ask. Exactly, my dear sir, exactly," Squire Anthony went on, for the sake of saying | "I will do my best; but this is now the seventh disappointment we have had. It would have been a heavy blow, of course, to have found the poor little fellow dead. But even that, with the recovery of the other, would have been better than this dark mystery, and, above all, would have freed the living from these maddening suspicions. But as it is, we must try to bear it, and to say, 'God's will be done.' But I am thinking too much about ourselves. Mr. Stew, I am very ungrateful not to think more of your convenience. You must be longing to be at home." "At your service, Sir Philip - quite at your service. My time is entirely my own." This was simply a bit of brag; and I saw that he was beginning to fidget; for, bold as his worship was on the bench, we knew that he was but a coward at board, where Mrs. Stew ruled with a rod of iron: and now it was long past dinner-time, even in the finest houses. "One thing more, then, before we go," answered Sir Philip, rising; "according to the newspaper, and as I hear, one young maiden was really saved from that disastrous shipwreck. I wish we could have gone on to see her; but I must return tomorrow morning, having left many anxious hearts behind. And to cross the sands in the dark, they say, is utterly impossible.” "Not at all, Sir Philip," said I, very firmly, for I honestly wished to go through with it; "although the sand is very deep, there is no fear at all, if one knows the track. It is only the cowardice of these people ever since the sand-storm. I would answer to take you in the darkest night, if only I had ever learned to drive." But Anthony Stew broke in with a smile. "It would grieve me to sit behind you, Dyo, and I trow that Sir Philip would never behold Appledore again. There is nothing these sailors will not attempt." Although I could sit the bow-thwart of a cart very well, with a boy to drive me, and had often advised the hand at the tiller, and sometimes as much as held the whip, all this, to my diffidence, seemed too little to warrant me in navigating a craft that carried two horses. Sir Philip looked at me, and perhaps he thought that I had not the cut of a coachman. However, all he said was this: her?" "She has me to look after her, your worship, and she shall not starve while I have a penny." "In spite of your kindness, Mr. Stew, hard to do. But that poor maid at that and your offer, my good sir," this was to wretched place what is to become of me, with much dignity-"I perceive that we must not think of it. And of what use could it be except to add new troubles to old ones? Sir, I have trespassed too much on your kindness; in a minute I will follow you." Anthony Stew, being thus addressed, was only too glad to skip into the carriage. "By, by, Dyo," he cried; "mend your ways, if you can, my man. think you have told fewer lies than usual; knock off one every time of speaking, and in ten years you will speak the truth." I Of this low rubbish I took no heed any more than any one would who knows me, especially as I beheld Sir Philip signalling with his purse to me, so that Stew might not be privy to it. Entering into the spirit of this, I had some pleasant memories of gentlemanly actions done by the superior classes towards me, but longer agone than I could have desired. And now being out of the habit of it, I showed some natural reluctance to begin again, unless it were really worth my while. Sir Philip understood my feelings, and I rose in his esteem, so that half-guineas went back to his pocket, and guineas took the place of them. "Mr. Llewellyn, I know," he said, "that you have served your country well; and it grieves me to think that on my account you have met with some harsh words today." If your worship only knew how little a thing of that sort moves me when I think of the great injustice. But I suppose it must be expected by a poor man such as I am. Justice Stew is spoiled by having so many rogues to deal with. I always make allowance for him; and of course I know that he likes to play with the lofty character I bear. If I had his house and his rich estate - but it does not matter after all, what are we?" "Ah, you may well say that, Llewellyn. Two months ago I could not have believed -but who are we to find fault with the doings of our Maker? All will be right if we trust in Him, although it is devilish "Bravely said, Llewellyn! My son is a sailor, and I understand them. I know that I can trust you fully to take charge of a trifle for her." "I love the maid," I answered truly; "I would sooner rob myself than her." "Of course you would, after saving her life. I have not time to say much to you, only take this trifle for the benefit of that poor thing." From a red leathern bag he took out ten guineas, and hastily plunged them into my hand, not wishing Stew to have knowledge of it. But I was desirous that everybody should have the chance to be witness of it, and so I held my hand quite open. And just at that moment our Bunny snored. "What! have you children yourself, Llewellyn? I thought that you were an old bachelor." "An ancient widower, your worship, with a little grandchild; and how to keep her to the mark, with father none and mother none, quite takes me off my head sometimes. Let me light your honour to your carriage." Mr. "Not for a moment, if you please; I wish I had known all this before. Stew never told me a word of this." "It would have been strange if he had," said I; "he is always so bitter against me, because he can never prove anything.' Then, Llewellyn, you must oblige me. Spend this trifle in clothes and things for that little snorer." He gave me a little crisp affair, feeling like a child's caul dried, and I thought it was no more than that. However, I touched my brow and thanked him as he went to the carriage-step; and after consulting all the village, I found it a stanch pledge from the Government for no less than five pounds sterling THE rarity of old Flemish wall-painting gives | and, except that the colour is somewhat faded, a special interest to the discovery recently made in the Johanniskirche of Herzogenbusch, of a wall-painting dating from 1447. It has been brought to light from beneath the whitewash, is tolerably well preserved. It depicts Christ on the cross, with the Virgin and St. John; at the foot of the cross is a burgher family of the town, the donors of the picture. From The Spectator. THE SOUTH-SEA ISLANDS COOLIE. FROM A CORRESPONDENT. SIR, The South-Sea Islands Coolie, or, as he is commonly called, the Kanaka, has been, is, and will be a person of considerable importance, both to the Australian sugar-planter who hires him, and to the English politician who talks about him. I venture, therefore, to ask for some small space in your valuable columns in which to show any of your readers whom the subject may interest or amuse, who the Coolie is, where he comes from, and how I went to fetch him. Anything approaching the question of the rights of labour at home and abroad is now-a-days so delicate a matter that in the present letter I feel inclined to confine myself entirely to the subject of the SouthSea Islanders, and to give my personal experience of their life on their own islands, and of their treatment in the Australian colony, which has lately raised so much discussion. The Australian labour-market has been at various times supplied with convicts, free and assisted emigrants, Chinamen and Germans; but it is only within the last few years that the introduction of sugargrowing industry into Queensland has turned our attention to that large group of islands, the New Hebrides, lying within a week's sail of our own colony, and crowded with an indigent and savage population. The planters, in despair at the restless character of the English workman, became naturally very eager to obtain a quantity of cheap and reliable labourers for the sugar season men who could stand the heat of the sun, who would work together in gangs without grumbling, and above all, who would bind themselves to their employers for at least three years. indeed, I remember that an aboriginal boy Now the planters must acknowledge and probably would not care to deny that the system of importing labourers as carried on previously to 1868 was liable to grave abuses. The Polynesian Labourers Act of 1868, however, abolished most of this, and compelled intending employers, before they were allowed even to apply for leave to import coolies, to enter into heavy bonds, by which they engaged to give them rations on the Government scale, consisting of 1 lb. meat and 1 lb. flour per diem, with vegetables, tea, sugar, tobacco, and soap; to pay them at the rate of £6 per annum for three years, and at the expiration of that time to send them back to their native country. In fact, the Queensland Government paid almost more attention to the welfare of the coolie than to that of the assisted immigrant from England or Germany. The Act, however, does not seem to have been very stringently enforced at first, and Captain Palmer, of H.M.S Rosario, in his interesting book on the subject, has already told us his story of the cruise of the Daphne, and of the attempt of the charterers of that vessel to evade its very ambiguous terms. For nearly two years the importation of coolies had almost ceased, as the islanders had got tired of waiting for the return of their countrymen, and I verily Under these circumstances, several small believe suspected us of having eaten them. ships started for the New Hebrides in For my own part, I had always had a quest of men, and the first arrival of wool- great longing for a cruise among these ly, stupid-looking Kanakas was regarded islands, and at last made up my mind that with great curiosity by all classes. Most I would go myself and see whether I could of us had heard of the South Seas, and not procure some labourers for the plantavaguely connected the subject with coral, tion. I was much amused by the conflictcocoa-nuts, and Masterman Ready, but few ing pieces of advice I received on the ocEnglish working-men, I fancy, had im-casion, everybody, however, agreeing that agined that actual South-Sea Islanders I must go armed to the teeth, while one would ever be brought to compete with man gravely informed me that the modus them on their own ground, the general operandi was this: - You should take a opinion evidently being that Chinamen or trade musket, value say 15s., and having Germans had already sufficiently en- found a chief, present him with it, requircroached upon their rights, and that the ing so many men, on which he would say idea of anything like a "nigger" lowering to his subjects, "You go to Queensland; their wages was monstrous and absurd; when you get there, in about a month's time, white man will probably eat you, but | volcano that crowns this island, catching if you dare to stop here I'll eat you my- the rays of the morning sun, and standing self to-morrow." out against the sky like a mountain of gold. Lovers of the picturesque would, I believe, have been almost satisfied could they have been present at the start from Brisbane of the little schooner I had engaged. Cheers and chaff from the lookers-on upon shore, the warlike get-up of myself and trading-master, and the happy faces of the returning islanders who had served their time on some plantation, and were going home, each with a huge chest containing £18's worth of calico, axes, grindstones, knives, &c., and last, but not least, each "darkie," despairing of getting rid of his money in any other way, and not appreciating the good old Australian custom of drinking it, had bought himself a silk umbrella, and held it over his head with great glee, though there was neither sun nor rain to wash out the grease with which he had plentifully bedaubed his long frizzled locks. I think I never appreciated the lines: till I landed there, for a viler-looking lot it had never been my ill-fortune to behold. The shore was literally black with the lordly savage, every man with a musket over his shoulder, and every man daubed to the eyes with vermilion. It was with great satisfaction that I made out that this display merely meant that the gentlemen had had their breakfast, and were going out to fight their next neighbours a tribe headed by a warrior who had acquired the name of "Washerwoman," certainly not from his habits or his linen - in which little employment they regularly spent their days, coming back in the afternoon happy and hungry, in much the same way I shall cut short the account of the as we should come in from shooting in voyage to the New Hebrides, how we England to afternoon's tea in the drawinglanded at one of the French islands, and room. I must say, however, to give them how I was incontinently seized upon by their due, they very seldom hurt anyone, two dirty soldiers without shoes, but with an islander's military tactics generally conchassepôts, who after a good deal of sisting in walking along with his musket trouble succeeded in telling me, in what at full cock, performing at the same time they called French, that all English trad-on an instrument resembling Pandean ing ships were forbidden to stop there, and pipes hung round his neck; and if during that I must give an account of myself to his martial progress he should happen to the Commandant; of my interview with see anybody or anything, or think he did, that gentleman, and how, after an ani- he would let fly forthwith, and without mated, but to me unpleasant conversation, we fraternized, and toasted "La belle France" in rum of my own providing; and how glad I was to leave my new acquaintance and get on board again, picking up our anchor in, s believe, as short a time as ever anchor was got up in 12fathom water. It is all over now, and I can only add that the respect I have for France and her representatives has prevented my showing myself in that port again. A brisk north-east breeze took us over to Tanna, a distance of some 60 miles, before, I believe, M. le Commandant had awakened to the fact that light claret is scarcely good training for new Queensland rum. I wish I had been an artist, to paint the beautiful view that rose before me that morning, the long swell breaking heavily upon the sunken coral reef, the glassy water beyond; then the cocoa-palms down to the water's edge, the steep rocks matted with such verdure as perhaps only Tanna produces; and in the distance the light cloud of smoke hanging over the sulphur waiting to see whether he had bagged anything, he would scamper back to his own bit of beach, where after a long harangue to the women he would reload his weapon and repeat the dose. In this style of fighting the great advantage is that you are always pretty sure, judging from your own case, that your adversary's musket won't go off. The hand-shaking with these veterans was something after the manner of Martin Chuzzlewit's reception. The trade-box was taken out of the boat, and a brisk trade in yams, cocoa-nuts, and pigs was started forthwith, the native showing much shrewdness in feeling the market with small pigs before producing big ones; sometimes, however, his cupidity got the better of his judgment, and if he saw anyone with an object that struck his fancy in the way of a pipe or tomahawk, that article he would have at any sacrifice. I have often wondered at the imperfect idea of number which a native possesses, he grasps easily the idea of one pig for one axe, but three pigs for three axes bothers him. I child among the Vril-ya would have killed a krek. Surrounded by a group of admiring spectators, we overhauled the chests of these the first men that had ever returned to Tanna from Queensland. Every article, from a fish-hook to a grindstone, was hailed with shrill cries of delight, and I had little difficulty in improving the occasion and recruiting twenty or thirty young men from the crowd around. It was when it came to parting that the great difficulty arose. The old women on one side insisting that their sons should not go, and the young men on the other indignant at being treated as children, made a very pretty quarrel as it stood, while I, having learnt the wisdom of the aphorism that you should never interfere in family differences, stood by endeavouring to look as unconcerned as possible. looked round for a chief and tried to open the conversation with him, with a view to my great object, recruits for Queensland, and commenced an animated harangue, pointing out to him the advantages the men would gain in going with me, and the strength they would add to the tribe when they brought back their muskets and powder. The chief smiled graciously, and manifested a sudden fancy for my sheathknife, which being in a moment of weakness given to him, he walked off leaving me to a crowd of applicants for more sheathknives of the same sort. I was not a little mortified at finding out afterwards that he had not understood a single word, being of a different tribe from my interpreter. And so I learnt a great and most important lesson, in all dealings with the natives, and which I cannot help thinking might be profitably taken to heart by charitable London ladies, "Never give In my subsequent experience of the away anything without value received, un- islands, I found the invariable custom of less you wish to put a stop to all trade leave-taking to be as follows:- The inand make everybody a beggar." Man tending emigrant would strip himself of after man shook his head when I asked all he had on, consisting probably of only him to come over to Queensland. The one bracelet, and sitting down on the universal cry was, "We are willing enough beach, would howl melodiously in the midto go and work and get muskets and pow- dle of a circle of women, after the payment der, but we should like to see some of our of which tribute to nature he would step brothers back here first, to hear what they briskly into the boat, as gleeful as a child say of your country." in prospect of a holiday. If asked to bring the women with him he would indignantly refuse, evidently thinking he was already well out of that mess, and would become quite reconciled to his new life before the south-east trades had blown us over to Vaté. But I fear that I have already trespassed too far on your valuable space, and will, with your permission, leave the rest of my cruise to another letter. — I am, Sir, etc., JAMES L. A. HOPE. It has never been my good fortune to contest an election in the old country, but I had heard that "the woman once gained, the man follows," is a maxim in canvassing, and acting on this plan, I approached a matronly looking lady, with a ring in her nose and a baby on her shoulder, and tried to make friends, upon which, drawing her grass petticoat-fringe close round her, she set up such a piteous howling, that I concluded the progress of civilization had not yet wafted the notion of woman's rights to those distant regions, and that far from having any influence over her husband, she actually seemed to be afraid of him! However, on the arrival of a happy boat-load of returning brothers, every little hitch was smoothed over, and forgetful of yams and pigs, all rushed off to inspect the contents of the chests they had brought, and in the struggle that ensued To the Editors of the Boston Daily Adver November 27, 1871. tiser: · DECEMBER 16, 1773. 35 COURT STREET, BOSTON, DEC. 16, 1871.J in carrying those heavy chests through the breakers, I could not help thinking In reference to the destruction of the that a little less sea-water would have tea in Boston harbour, December 16, 1773, been advantageous to the silk umbrellas. I think the following characteristic letter Glad was I, then, that these men had been well treated in Queensland, for I am con- may be of interest to your readers. It is vinced that had a bad character been giv- a copy of one now in my possession, writen of us, they would have knocked us on ten by John Adams to General James Warthe head with as little compunction as a 'ren of Plymouth, and if I mistake not, has |