gateway. One wing of the casement of Hansen's window stood open as of old; the swallow's nest too was still there. Hesitatingly I ascended the stair and opened the room door. There my old Hansen lay, still and peaceful; the linen cloth which had covered her was half thrown back. On the edge of the bed sat my fellow-traveller, but his eyes passed over the corpse and were fixed on the bare wall above. I saw well that his rigid gaze spanned a vast gulf, and on the other side stood the bright vision of his youth, now quickly fading into the dim air.

I had seated myself, apparently unobserved by him, in the arm-chair by the open window, and looked at the empty nest, from which peeped forth blades of grass and feathers, which had once served as protection to the little fledglings. When I again cast a glance into the room the head of the old man was bent down close above that of the corpse. He seemed to be gazing per

plexedly into the aged sunken countenance which lay before him in all the calm solemnity of death. "If I could but see her eyes once more!" he murmured. "But God has closed them!" Then, as if to convince himself that nevertheless it was indeed she her self, he took a lock of the shining grey hair, which flowed down on either side of her head upon the linen sheet, and passed it caressingly between his hands.

"We have come too late, Harry Jensen !” I cried sorrowfully.

He looked up and nodded. "By fifty years," said he, "just as life has passed." Then slowly rising he turned back the sheet, and covered up the peaceful face of the dead.

A gust of wind struck the window. Methought I heard afar, from out the high heavens where the swallows fly, the last words of their old song :

"Als ich wiederkam, als ich wiederkam,
War alles leer."

IN

N Jamaica Lord Elgin had become acquainted with a Planter Colony; in Canada he had become acquainted with a free and self-governed Colony. In China, to enlarge still further the circle of his Colonial experience, he was to become acquainted with what might be called-with regard to a portion at least of its inhabitants-a filibustering Colony. The relations of nations styling themselves civilized with barbarous or semi-barbarous populations, fill one of the darkest pages of the history of mankind in general, and of British history in particular. And, perhaps, on that dark page there is nothing of deeper hue than the record of British opium-smugglers and kidnappers in China.

"Unless I am greatly misinformed," says Lord Elgin, in replying to an address from some missionaries, "vile and reckless men, protected by the privileges to which I have referred, and still more by the terror which British prowess has inspired, are now infesting the coasts of China. It may be that for the moment they are able, in too many cases, to perpetrate the worst crimes with impunity; but they bring discredit on the Christian name; inspire hatred of the foreigner, where no such hatred exists; and, as some recent instances prove, teach occasionally to the natives a lesson of vengeance which, when once learnt, may not always be applied with discrimination." "It is a terrible business," he says, in another place," this living among inferior races. I have seldom, from men or women, since I came into the East, heard a sentence which was reconcilable with the hypothesis that Christianity had ever come into the world. Detestation, contempt, ferocity, vengeance, whether China

men or Indians be the object. There are some three or four hundred servants in this house. When one first passes by their salaaming, one feels a little awkward. But the feeling soon wears off, and one moves among them with perfect indifference, treating them not, as dogs, because in that case we would whistle to them and pat them, but as machines with which one can have no communion or sympathy. Of course those who can speak the language are somewhat more en rapport with the natives, but very slightly so, I take it. When the passions of fear and hatred are engrafted on this indifference, the result is frightful—an absolute callousness as to the sufferings of the objects of their passions, which must be witnessed to be understood and believed." Is it very wonderful that, under such circumstances, missionary enterprise does not make more progress among the natives? Is there not, in fact, a need of missionary enterprise in another direction?

The event which led to the rupture with China, and finally to a revolution in our relations with that country, and in the policy of the Chinese Government, are too well known to require minute recapitulation. The Lorcha Arrow, a pretended British vessel, was boarded by the Chinese on a charge of piracy. The British on the spot seized the occasion for a quarrel, and, finding arms in their hands, took the opportunity of enforc ing what they styled treaty obligations, and bombarded Canton. There was no doubt, in Lord Elgin's mind at all events, as to the character of the transaction. "I have hardly alluded," he says, " in my ultimatum to that wretched question of the Arrow, which is a scandal to us, and is so considered, I have

reason to know, by all except the few who are personally compromised." In another passage, he distinctly intimates his conviction that the Arrow was one of a class of vessels which fraudulently carried the British flag for the purpose of levying piratical exactions on the junks. The House of Commons passed a vote of censure against the Government; but the feelings engendered by the Crimean war were still dominant in the nation; and an appeal to the country, by the dissolution of Parliament, resulted in a complete triumph for Lord Palmerston and the

Arrow.

Lord Elgin, during the two years of his residence at home, had given a general support to the Government, and the qualities which he had displayed in Canada pointed him out as the right man to be sent to China. The choice proved a most happy one: he secured the diplomatic objects of his mission with the least possible infringement of the laws of humanity; and, by his whole conduct and bearing, did much to redeem the tarnished honour of his country. Fortunately for us he kept a pretty regular journal, and he has thus enabled us to see countries which he visited, the people with whom he came in contact, and the events in which he bore the leading part, through the eyes of a clear-sighted, sagacious, and rightminded man. His command of language was also remarkable, and he had great descriptive power.

He went, of course, by the Overland route. Passing through Egypt, he says, "What might not be made of this country, if it were wisely guided.

parable fertility of the country, are not badly off, as compared with the peasantry elsewhere. We passed, at one of our stopping places between Cairo and Suez, part of a Turkish regiment on their way to Jeddah. These men were dressed in a somewhat European costume, some of them with the Queen's medal on their breast. There was a harem in a sort of omnibus with them, containing the establishment of one of the officers. One of the ladies dropped her veil for a moment, and I saw rather a pretty face; almost the only Mahommedan female face I have seen since I reached this continent. They are much more rigorous, it appears, with the ladies in Egypt than at Constantinople. There they wear a veil which is quite transparent, and go about shopping; but in Egypt they seem to go out very little, and their veil completely hides everything but the eyes. In the palace which I visited near Cairo (and which the Pacha offered, if we had chosen to take it), I looked through some of the grated windows allowed in the harems, and I suppose that it must require a good deal of practice to see comfortably out of them. It appears that the persons who ascend to the top of the minarets to call to prayer at the appointed hours, are blind men, and that the blind are selected for this office lest they should be able to look down into the harems. That is, certainly, carrying caution very far."

He arrives at Ceylon, and is charmed with its greenness and beauty, its luxuriant vegetation, its bright nights, and the brilliant phosphorescence of its seas. He takes a ride into the interior, and finds one of the most magnificent views he ever witnessedin the foreground this tropical luxuriance, and beyond, far below, the glistening sea, studded with ships and boats innumerable, over which again the Malay peninsula, with its varied outline.