body. What a life the poor wretch leads; and what she complains of most, never an instant to clean herself! She is about as dirty as a sweep. Even on Sundays, she has but a faint remission from duty. By way of an immense favour, she is allowed to go to evening service once a fortnight. The soul of a maid-of-allwork is, I suppose, thought to be very little worth. Dear, kind-hearted legislators, do not lavish all your compassion on factory workers. Spare a little for domestic servants. Do pass a law that they shall not labour more than the moderate quantity of eighteen hours out of the four-and-twenty! BOOK-BORROWING. WHEN we were at school, it was customary for the boys to write on the fly-leaf of all their books, especially their more attractive ones, these verses, intended as a sort of take notice' for the careless and the furtive borrower : If thou art borrowed by a friend, Not that imparted knowledge doth But books, I find, if often lent, Read slowly, pause frequently, think seriously, With the corners of the leaves not turned down.' It has been remarked, that the greatest solitude in the world is to be alone in London. A young man becomes painfully aware of this truth when he is settled in one of the abodes I have above described. The family circle, the agreeable chit-chat, the sisterly or maternal affection, the thousand comforts of home, are sadly missed. If there is one thing more than another the want of which is painfully felt, it is the charm of female society. After being engaged in business, or, which is very often the case, the pursuit of business, the whole day, to return to one's lonely lodgings with no friend to greet, no company to cheer, is what renders even a sojourn in London so distasteful and almost insupportable to country visitants. The lodger sits in his apartment in the midst of the huge city, whose whole extent, with its millions of human beings, contains no friend, perhaps no acquaintance. The occasional knock at the door announces no friendly visitor. Perhaps the occupant of the second floor, who, after labouring in the uninviting toils of a salaried law-clerk during the day, returns to his wife and three children, who have seen no familiar face since his departure; or perhaps a fellow-adventurer is retiring to his single apartment on the top floor, which serves both as a sitting and bed-burn, sent to the poor student to borrow a pair of bel room. If a young man has not means sufficient to support frequent attendance at the theatres, and other places of amusement; if he is compelled to live frugally, and has no friends or acquaintances to whom he may occasionally resort, a life in London requires no slight self-dependence, no small self-sufficiency, to yield anything like pleasure or satisfaction. The property of homesickness' becomes very strongly developed; and nothing short of a stern necessity, or an indomitable perseverance, can sustain the wanderer from the domestic hearth. It is a common remark, that friends are much more scarce than acquaintances; and at no time is the truth of this observation more strikingly apparent than during a pilgrimage in the metropolis. And yet, with all these drawbacks; notwithstanding the vast and thronged solitude, the absence of friends, and of fresh air; notwithstanding the narrow street, the close room, the dingy curtains, and the solitary meal-there is yet a pleasure, great and supporting, in the pursuit of a worthy object amid such sources of discouragement and depression. There is a satisfaction in overcoming difficulties, and in battling with opposing circumstances, which the pleasure-seeker never knows; and the diligent frequenter of theatres, the visitor in crowded halls, and the attendant on the marts of fashion, has never felt, and is incapable of feeling, the proud self-gratulation which arises in the breast of the youth struggling in the solitude of London-battling to overcome difficulties, and buoyed up with the hope of being ultimately successful. It is pleasing to know that the condition of young men in lodgings in London is beginning to be meliorated by various movements in the social world. A cheap and improving kind of literature offers its solacements; associations of the club-house character, or at least offering the advantages of a library and lectures, have been established in different quarters of the metropolis; and for strangers falling into sickness, that useful establishment, the Sanatorium, offers a friendly asylum on moderate terms, and thus is illness robbed of one of its most distressing features. | In the three first lines of these familiar verses, the owner very generously offers to lend the book to any friend who simply wants to read and study it. This praiseworthy liberality is quite in the spirit of that of the celebrated book-collector Grollier, who had his splendid volumes inscribed with the words, Jo. Grollierii et amicorum, implying that they were intended for the use of his friends as well as himself. There is something selfish in refusing to lend a book, provided it is not a very rare or costly one. The selfish bookowner should be reminded of the anecdote of the poor student at college, who sent a note to one of the professors to ask the loan of a book. The professor's reply was, that he never lent books to any one, but that the student was very welcome to come to his library and read all day long. Soon after this denial, on one very frosty morning the professor, not being able to get his fire to lows. 'No,' said the youth, I never lend my bellows to any one, but the professor is quite welcome to come here and blow my fire all day long.' At an early period, when books were exceedingly rare and valuable, from their existing only in the form of manuscript, it was but reasonable to refuse to lend them, as their accidental loss would have been irreparable. It was customary then to secure them to the shelves by chains, ropes, bolts, &c. The library at Grantham still contains several books attached to chains. During the thirteenth century, so scarce and precious were the manuscript books, that it sometimes happened that if a religious council were assembled, and wanted to consult the works of the Fathers, they had to send to a considerable distance to borrow them at much expense, giving a heavy security for their safe return. The works of eminent medical men were so rarely to be met with, that on one occasion, when a king of France wished to possess a copy of the writings of Baize, a celebrated Arabian physician, the faculty of medicine of Paris would not lend it even to the monarch without pledges. Heber, the great book-collector, intended to have bequeathed his extensive library to the British Museum, but he altered his will, in consequence of the authorities at that institution refusing to lend him a rare work, which he wished to compare with one in his possession, he being at the time confined to his house, and unable to go to the library. The condition on lending a book, that the borrower is not to take upon himself to lend it, is very necessary with many free-andeasy sort of people. Charles Lamb, writing to Coleridge, says, 'Why will you make your visits, which should give pleasure, matter of regret to your friends? You never come but you take away some folio, that is part of my existence. I had no right to lend you the book you have just taken. I may lend you my own books, because it is at my own hazard, but it is not honest to hazard a friend's property; I always make that distinction.' Many a reader must have had the mortification to find that books, if often lent, return to him no more. We can call to mind a long list of works, and solitary volumes of works, that have had leave of absence, but are never likely to rejoin their regiment. national libraries-is not only a crime, but a folly, as it is Some time ago, the Sydney Gazette' contained an ad-like trying to rob one's own library, for it already belongs vertisement from a gentleman, requesting his friends to to everybody. The universal feeling ought rather to be return various books that they had borrowed, and, by an anxiety to add something to it, than a mean wish to way of inducement, promising to lend them more after- filch from it. wards. Sir Walter Scott, on lending a book to a friend, begged that he would not fail to return it, adding goodhumouredly, Although most of my friends are bad arithmeticians, they are all good book-keepers.' This joke of Sir Walter's reminds us of some one's witty verses, entitled The Art of Book-keeping,' in which the following lines occur: How hard, when those who do not wish Who call and take some favourite tome, Behold the book-shelf of a dunce Who borrows-never lends; New tales and novels you may shut They're gone-and though the leaves are "cut," For pamphlets lent I look around, But when they take a book that's bound, 'Tis surely extra-guilt. A circulating library Is mine-my birds are flown; There's one odd volume left, to be Like all the rest, a-lone. I, of my Spenser quite bereft, They picked my Locke, to me far more Even Glover's works I cannot put My life is wasting fast away I suffer from these shocks; They still have made me slight returns, For oh! they've cured me of my Burns, But all I think I shall not say, For as they have not found me Gay, To an advertisement of a recent work on Surnames, the publisher adds this line of recommendation :—' An amusing volume, which comes home to everybody.' If so, it must be a capital book to lend, for most works are sadly deficient in instinct to find their way home. Last year it was stated in the Chamber of Deputies that, through lending works from the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, no less than twenty thousand of its volumes are lost, and a great number mutilated. The manuscript of Molière, stolen thence in 1825, was recently offered for sale by auction in Paris, the minister of public instruction not being able to recover it by means of the tribunals, for want of any mark to prove its identity. By recent regulations, this valuable library is protected from the recurrence of such depredations. In our own country, the British Museum has not escaped from stealers of books, manuscripts, prints, and specimens. To steal from such places as these-free, public, SINGULAR ADVENTURE WITH A LION. The following is told on the authority of Mr Moffat, the Cape missionary :-A man having sat down on a shelving low rock near a small fountain to take a little rest after his hearty drink, he fell asleep; but the heat of the rock soon disturbed his dreams, when he beheld a 'large lion crouching before him, with its eyes glaring in his face, and within little more than a yard of his feet. He was at first struck motionless with terror, but recovering his presence of mind, he eyed his gun, and began moving his hand slowly towards it, when the lion raised its head and gave a tremendous roar; the same awful warning being repeated whenever the man attempted to move his hand. The rock at length became so heated, that he could scarcely bear his naked feet to touch it. The day passed, and the night also, but the lion never moved from the spot: the sun rose again, and its intense heat soon rendered his feet past feeling. At noon the lion rose and walked to the water, only a few yards distant, looking behind as it went, lest the man should move, when, seeing him stretch out his hand to take his gun, it turned in a rage, and was on the point of springing upon him. But another night passed as the former had done; and the next day again the lion went towards the water, but while there, he listened to some noise apparently from an opposite quarter, and disappeared in the bushes.' The man now seized his gun, but on first essaying to rise, he dropt, his ankles being without power. At length he made the best of his way on his hands and knees, and soon after fell in with another native, who took him to a place of safety; and, as he expressed it, with his 'toes roasted.' This man belonged to Mr Schmelen's congregation at Bethany.' He lost his toes, and was a cripple for life.' AN INCONSISTENCY. The horror which is especially evinced in the minds of us all by the death of one man by railway accident, more than by other means, I have often thought must result from the idea that at any time it may be our own case; yet here are thousands upon thousands annually destroyed around us by means as fatal, but, with common care, more easily prevented, which at any moment may seize upon the strongest of us; and this, until lately, with scarcely a word or a thought upon the subject. Happily, however, we are now on the eve of a great and glorious and irresistible change.-Report of H. Austin, Esq. on the Sunitary Condition of Worcester. THE SIN OF BUILDING UNWHOLESOME HOUSES. It is proved that, besides the waste of money, health, and life incurred by the system now usually pursued in erecting the lower classes of dwellings in great towns, where comfort, cleanliness, and decency are either not thought of at all, or are sacrificed to a short-sighted greediness of gain, there is also an incalculable amount of demoralisation attributable to the same causes; and that, to say the least, an effectual bar is thereby put to the intellectual, moral, and religious improvement of this large portion of the community.-Letters of the Rev. C. Girdlestone. SALE OF NEGRO CHILDREN. According to an advertisement in a New Orleans newspaper, the following orphan children' are offered for sale: years; David, aged about nine years; Cyrus, aged about -John, aged about twelve years; James, aged about eleven nine years; Yellow Alex., aged about eight years; Black Alex., aged about eight years; Abraham, aged about five years.' Negro children are usually valued by their weight, that being considered a pretty good criterion of their health and strength. The custom, accordingly, is to place them in the scales. A likely boy will fetch from five to six dollars a-pound; but some go as high as nine dollars a-pound. Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, High Street, Edinburgh. Also sold by D. CHAMBERS, 98 Miller Street, Glasgow; W. S. Ok, 147 Strand, and Amen Corner, London; and J. M'GLASHAN, 21 D'Olier Street, Dublin.-Printed by W. and R. CHAMBERS, Edinburgh. EDINBURGH JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c. No. 168. NEw Series. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1847. WHAT IS LIFE? I Do not mean to perplex myself either with physiological or psychological questions. I will rather set out with assumptions which will be understood by all, and contradicted by none. Judging by the conduct of men, and by their sentiments, from Job downwards, Life, abstractedly, must be considered the summum bonumthe mere privilege of living the highest boon of Providence. Exceptions to this rule might no doubt be pointed out. Cases might be mentioned in which life has been considered secondary to honour, fame, the gratification of pride or revenge, or relinquished in favour of the mere tranquillity and unconsciousness of the grave. But these are the cases of a few individuals out of the myriads of mankind, for, generally speaking, The weariest and most loathed worldly life To what we fear of death.' It is therefore worth inquiring-What is the nature of the gift we estimate so highly? What is the real loss we sustain in its deprivation? What, in short, is Life? Some philosophers tell us that life is combustion, and that the poets, by the inspiration of their art, suggested the true definition when they likened it to the flame of a taper. This may be true, or it may not; but it is wide of my present purpose. In asking what life is, I mean to put a moral, not a scientific question, and address it not to the learned, but to the ignorant. In like manner, if I inquired what is the body? I should be answered by the chemist that it is a combination of carbon, lime, iron, and various other substances; but I would rather be told, by the ordinary world, of its bones, sinews, and muscles. Life can only be known to the general inquirer by its action. We do not know how we come to live, but we know that we do live. How do we know this? By our sensations; which sensations are the germ of our ideas, the elements of all our thoughts and feelings. If this be true, it is incorrect to say that one of the lower animals is as conscious of life as a man. The power of the germ can only be measured by its development; and the farther this development is carried, the greater consciousness of life there will be. A man, therefore, has more life, so to speak, than an animal; and a thinking and civilised man, than a savage. If we could strip a thinking and civilised man of his intellectual faculties, one by one, we should find him descend in the scale of animal being till he landed in the brute nature. In that state he would still live. The functions of the body requisite for sustaining life would still go on; but he would have a smaller portion of the principle of life, PRICE 1d. a less exquisite consciousness of life, a less full enjoyment of life. If life is the summum bonum, the more we have of it the better. The portion of the mere physical man is contemptibly insignificant when measured with that of the intellectual man; and this not comparatively, but positively. I mean that the two portions are not of the same value to the individuals possessing them, even taking into consideration their relative social position; a fact which will at once appear, if we suppose the two individuals to be in the same station in society. The case is not altered, however, if we suppose them to be, as they generally are, in different or opposite stationsthe one rich, and the other poor. A thing is said, economically, to be worth just as much as it will fetch; and so it is with life as we are now considering it. The smaller portion is little more than sufficient to keep the functions of the body in movement, while the latter not only does this, but opens a thousand sources of pleasure and profit to the mind. Life, in this sense, may be compared to money. A small sum enables us to provide for our physical wants; while a large sum surrounds us with comforts, elegances, and luxuries. It is nonsense to say (though it is frequently said) that the small sum is as much to the poor man as the large one is to the rich; for this is to suppose the former to be fixed immovably in his condition of poverty. When the poor man becomes rich, his views extend, his desires soar, his wants multiply in proportion; and even so, as the ignorant man amasses stores of knowledge, he feels a thousand delightful and hitherto unknown sensations superadded in his being-a new world spreads before his eyes, a new heaven opens upon his soul. Let us consider the first experiments of a child in the exercise of his faculty of sight. Everything is new and strange to his eyes. He confounds forms and distances, or rather he has no such perceptions as those of form and distance, till these gradually awaken from the action and reaction of the other senses with the one in question. At length he recognises objects, persons, places, and insensibly acquires that degree of knowledge which enables him to move without danger, and play his part in the social circle around him. If he stops here, he is indeed different from the brutes, because he belongs to a more perfect race of animals; but in various instances he suffers himself to be outstripped by them, without seeking compensation in the higher faculties of his being. Nature has lavished her skill on the external senses in the lower animals, but denied to them intellectual development; while man she has endowed with the power of almost endless progress, though originating in less acute organs of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. In most of these an ignorant man in civilised society is inferior to his dog; and it is only in the savage, who, owing to his being entirely excluded from intellectual exercise, is thrown back upon such rudiments, that the animal finds a worthy competitor. But we shall suppose that the individual in question is not satisfied with using his sight merely to know his friends or enemies, merely to enable him to work or to play, merely to enlighten the small circle of his daily employments, like the candle which illumines his cottage room. In him this wonderful faculty, without being really increased in acuteness, receives, when in combination with the other powers of his nature, a higher development. It enables him to traverse the whole earth, to become familiar with all the kingdoms of nature, to penetrate into the regions of space, to number the stars of heaven, to measure their distances, to trace their paths through the sky. What a different faculty is sight in this man from that of the human clod! But each of the other faculties is, in like manner, acted upon by the rest, and the results are as wonderful in all. The senses are originally less perfect in man than in the lower animals; but their combinations occasion developments so grand and godlike, that we lose in their contemplation all thought of the humble germs from which they sprang. 'I think therefore I live,' says the philosopher. But the two actions cannot be separated. Life is thought. A thinking man lives more than another, and he lives longer. The complaint of shortness of life is, generally speaking, as absurd as it is common. It is usually made by persons whose lives are of no value either to themselves or society, and whose time merely consists of so many years. A dog might reasonably enough complain of the shortness of his life, since he uses his faculties to the best advantage in his power; but the complaint is ridiculous in a man who is satisfied with the life of an animal. With countless treasures within his reach, he complains of being poor, because he will not stretch forth his hand to grasp them! If life is thought, he has it in his power to live long. The slumberer, for instance, who is awakened by these lines into intellectual energy, will live as long in one day as he has hitherto done in several years. This may be illustrated by a very common circumstance. If we set out to walk over a plain unvaried surface-an expanse of sand, for instance-however tedious we may find the journey while in progress, it will appear short when it is over. In looking back, we have no data wherewith to measure. The line of time has a beginning and an end, and our thoughts have no halting-place between. If, on the other hand, we traverse the very same distance computed in miles, but diversified with towns and villages, woods and waters, hills and valleys, the converse will take place. The journey will appear short while we are in progress, for we shall have no time to think of its length, being carried away at every step by some new and interesting object; but on looking back in imagination, we shall find so many landmarks by the wayside, so many channels of thought intersecting our course, that the distance will seem immense. The number of miles may be the same, but the one journey is longer than the other, and we have lived longer during its course. The monotony of life is another groundless complaint, occasioned by our failing to ask ourselves the question What is life? Life is neither weaving, nor printing, nor digging: it is thinking. There is no employment so dull or uniform as to deprive its follower of the power of thought. Nay, the more mechanical the employment, the more opportunity it may be said to afford for mental cultivation. The shuttle has before now borne burthen to the lofty rhyme,' and it was no intellectual taskwork which gilded the visions of him in the acquisition of knowledge; and there are few so ill remunerated as wholly to exclude their follower from the stores of thought that are now so widely diffused by the press. To complain of the monotony of life, is to complain of inertness of mind. Among the lower classes, this inertness is the slumber of faculties that have never been awakened; among the upper (who term it ennui), it is the weariness of faculties that have wasted themselves upon contemptible pursuits, and when these have palled, have not energy enough left for anything higher or nobler. In the former case, the individual frequently takes to drinking, and is pitied by the unreflecting, on account of the temptations to which he was exposed by his monotonous trade; in the latter, he is graphically described as being used up'-he has nothing more in him, and is only fit to be laughed at on the stage, shoved aside in the streets, and walked over in the crowd. To live is not merely to touch, to taste, to smell, to see, to hear: it is to use all our faculties in the highest condition of development our opportunities permit. This, and not the other, is the natural life of man. A person whose mind is vacant is like a stunted plant, kept down from its proper growth by insufficient light, or heat, or air. This is as yet, to a certain extent, the position of us all; for the mind of the world is only in the process of awakening from the slumber of ages. We are only pressing forward to the accomplishment of an unknown destiny. We have not yet reached our state of nature; we have not yet thrown completely off the shackles of circumstances that so long impeded our growth, and strangled our energies. But we are on the way, and that is much. Life, in its higher sense, which was formerly confined to individuals— 'Lights of the world, and demi-gods of fame' now pervades the masses of the people. It exists in the hut as well as in the palace, in the workshop as well as in the study. And the result of this approach to intellectual equality is moral sympathy; for there is a freemasonry in knowledge which, in spite of physical and social differences, makes men brethren. No one who has his eyes open can fail to recognise this fact. It accounts clearly and intelligibly for appearances which would else give the lie to all history. Before the general advance of knowledge, social prejudices in this country are vanishing like mists before the sun, and political prejudices have already wellnigh disappeared. It may, indeed, have been from sheer exhaustion that, after a twenty years' war, the states of Europe relaxed their gripe of each others' throats; but it is owing to the general progress of knowledge that the torch of war has never since been rekindled, and that, after a thirty years' peace, we seem now as remote as ever from the madness of strife. The bellicose propensities of statesmen would no longer receive encouragement from the people -we should no longer see a crowd of simpletons rushing in with the offer of their lives and fortunes' at the first whisper of a project for defacing the image of God, and destroying the work of civilisation. But fortunately these propensities no longer exist, for statesmen themselves have shared in the spirit of improvement. Compare the aspect of parliament now with that which it presented before the battle of Waterloo-before the sins of the European kings were cast upon the back of a single sacrifice, and the poor scape-goat sent off to the wilderness of ocean! We may no longer listen entranced to the thunder of eloquence, or have our senses bewildered in the mazes of rhetoric, for the fortune of nations hangs no longer upon the intonation of a voice or the turning of a period; but a general good sense, a general tone of moral feeling, and a general yearning after the good of all, in contradistinction to that of cliques and classes, attest the progress of general knowledge. Who walked in glory and in joy, Beautiful, no doubt, are the tree-tops, towers, and Following his plough upon the mountain side.' pinnacles that are gilded by the level rays of the mornThere are few avocations of so absorbing a nature as to ing sun; but the shadow which then broods over the afford no time whatever for the exercise of the faculties I lower portions of the picture is cold, and dark, and drear. That sun, thank God, has now risen high above the horizon; and although the loftier objects of the scene are still clearly defined against the radiant sky, beneath we have light and heat pervading the whole surface, and opening flowers giving forth beauty and perfume from the humblest hillock, from the lowliest dell. Let us turn our eyes for a moment 'O'er the dark rereward and abysm of time,' where lights are gleaming through the gloom like stars upon the distant shore. These lights are the great men of antiquity. The genius of individuals survives, while that of nations is lost. Instead of tongues and peoples, we find only books and names; instead of cities and palaces, only tombs and ruins. A great cycle in the world's age was accomplished in the fall of the Roman empire. All antecedent realities were expunged, and only a few records here and there saved from destruction; and then a new course of existence was begun, and a new chapter of history opened. How different is this era from the last! Instead of stars and darkness, we are in the midst of life and light. Ours is the age of a moral and intellectual movement, of which it is impossible to imagine the end. Science, instead of being locked up in temples and schools, is diffused throughout the length and breadth of the land; and the pale mechanic,' bending over his monotonous task, laughs at the ignorance of Pliny. But while indulging in a thankful pride, let us all those who have the power to impart knowledge, and those who have the ability to receive it-let us all bethink ourselves of the higher responsibilities involved in our higher advantages. We, the people at large, occupy the place of the priests and thaumaturgists of the antique world, and wo to us if we neglect the sacred fire committed to our charge! We are not like the shadows of bygone history: our spirits will survive in endless transmission. 'Forward-forward!' is the cry of destiny. Awake, ye who slumber, from the slumber of your faculties! Read, listen, speak, feel, think! In one word-LIVE: for life is thought! WANG KEAOU LWAN. A CHINESE TALE OF BYGONE YEARS. A CURIOUS little volume has come into our possession, purporting to be a Chinese tale, printed at the Canton press in 1839, and translated from the original by Robert Thom, Esq. resident at Canton. It is a small square book, done up in a green cover, with the title first in Chinese characters, and then in English. Yet even in English, the name of the work is somewhat hard to get through. It is as follows, WANG KEAOU LWAN PIH NEEN CHANG HAN, which words, as we learn from the preface, compose the name of the heroine of the story, and may be abbreviated into the more manageable terms, Wang Keaou Lwan. According to Chinese custom, the surname goes before the Christian name, and therefore Wang must be understood to be the lady's family appellation. She was, in short, Miss Wang; and by this, as well as by the more familiar name Keaou Lwan, we shall take the liberty of speaking of her. Miss Wang's story is a romance of the affections, founded, it is said, on facts, and has been selected from a large collection of fictions by the translator, partly from being pleased with the manner in which the plot is developed, and partly from the quantity of poetry interwoven in the piece.' Within our limited space, we can do no more than offer an abridgment of the story, paraphrased in certain passages; but even in this partially altered form, the reader, we hope, will obtain a tolerably correct idea of the original. As a specimen of Chinese literature, the piece may not be without its value, independently of any special interest in the story. Teenshun [1458 of our era], a military chief named During the first year of the reign of the Emperor Wang was appointed to reside at the station of Nanyang, in the province of Honan, and forthwith went thither, taking his family, consisting of his wife and two daughters, along with him. The name of the elder of these maidens, who was about eighteen years of age, was Keaou Lwan, and that of the younger was Keaou Fung. Although only sixteen years of age, Fung was already betrothed to a cousin in a distant part of the country; and as she was married, and removed with her husband shortly after the arrival of the family in Nanyang, Keaou Lwan was left in a solitary and unpleasant position. To console her as much as possible, her father kindly invited her aunt, Tseaou, to come and reside as a member of the household. Aunt Tseaou was a lively and obliging person, but her society failed to console her pensive and affectionate niece. Keaou Lwan's accomplishments and feelings were of an interesting kind. From her infancy she had been an ardent student of books; she could wield her pen, and compose with classic elegance; and it was only from being a favourite daughter, with rare excellence of character, that her parents had prevented her from being long since wooed and betrothed. Frequently would she sigh when standing in the pure breeze, or complain to the bright moon of the icy state of singleness to which she seemed to be doomed. Aunt Tseaou, who was very intimate with her, understood the feelings of her heart; but beyond her aunt, no one else, not even her parents, knew anything about the matter. 'One day, being the Tsing Ming term, she went to the back garden, accompanied by Aunt Tseaou and her waiting-maid, to play at the game of the Chinese swing or roundabout, by way of amusement. Just when in the very height of their noise and merriment, they suddenly espied, at a gap in the garden-wall, a very finelooking young gentleman, dressed in mulberry-coloured clothes, and wearing on his head a cap or kerchief of the Tang dynasty, who was bending forward his head and looking on, calling out without ceasing, "Well done! well done!" Keaou Lwan got into a sad flutter, her whole face became the colour of scarlet, and hiding herself behind Aunt Tseaou, they precipitately made the best of their way for the fragrant apartment, and the waiting-maid went in after them. The student thus seeing no one in the garden, leaped over the wall, and entered, and immediately spying something or other among the grass, and taking it up, he found it to be a handkerchief of scented gauze, three cubits long, and finely embroidered. Of this he took possession, as if it had been a pearl of great price; and hearing the sound of people coming from within, he made his exit from the garden as he had entered it. Then taking his stand as before, in the gap of the wall, who should he find it be but the waiting-maid coming to look for the gauze handkerchief! The student seeing her go round and round again and again, and hunt here, and there, and everywhere, until perfectly fagged, at length smiled, and told her that he had picked up the object of her search.' A chaffering conversation now ensues, in which the young gentleman mentions that his name is Ting Chang, that he is a son of Professor Chow, and is at present a student in the adjoining college. He has no objection to give up the handkerchief, but only into the hands of the fair owner; and to make her acquainted |