THE KAREENS. The women wear a sarong, or petticoat, over which is a vest, ornamented with bits of coloured glass and adornings. They have also necklaces, and surround their heads with a cotton cloth, whose two ends fall over their shoulders. Their ears are elongated by the suspension, from a large bored hole, of flowers, precious stones, and gold and silver orna ments. Their hats are made of bamboos, and are ascended by a wide ladder; bamboos, calabashes, baskets, and a few coarse mats, form the whole of their furniture. These habitations are only built for temporary use; the people migrate year after year from one spot to another, burning and clearing away a space for the cultivation of the rice they consume. They have no books or written laws, their legislation being traditional. Their chiefs are elected, not hereditary, and exercise a paternal and protective influence. The Kareens are believed to have a common ancestry with the Laos, whom they much resemble. They recognise a good and an evil spirit; the good genius being well disposed, they do not deem it necessary to conciliate him; hence all their sacrifices are offered to the maleficent genius. They have no priests or pagodas, no assemblages for worship or religious displays. They address their supplications to the evil spirit when they have any favour to ask, or evil to avert. This absence of religious forms and prejudices in favour of any particular system, has made the Kareens willing converts to Christianity, and the Protestant missionaries have had considerable success among them. They possess many excellent moral qualities; they are sober, trustworthy, and truthful. Polygamy is unknown among them. Hospitality is so universal that it is claimed without hesitation, and granted without stint. A visitor is always welcome to food and shelter, and they distribute willingly among one another whatever they possess in superfluity. They are wholly uneducated. Fishing, hunting, and the simple cultivation of rice and vegetables, are their sole em. ployments. A candidate for the hand of a virgin must escalade her cabin, and is expected to overthrow a strong man placed for her defence. They burn their dead, but rescue from the ashes a portion of the skull, which they suspend from a tree, with the clothes, ornaments, and arms of the deceased. They dance, singing lugubrious songs, around these relics, which the 207 eldest afterwards convey to and bury at the foot of some distant mountains, charging the spirit of the departed not to return to molest his family, as all his earthly possessions have been interred with him. The account given by Mr. Judson of the Karsens is, in some respects less favourable than that of Bishop Pallegois. Their early history seems quite a matter of conjecture; but they are supposed to emanate from the aboriginal inhabitants of the regions in which they dwell. Mr. Judson calls them meek, peaceful, simple, and credulous, with many of the softer virtues, and few flagrant vices. They are drunken, filthy, and indolent; but their morals, in other respects, are superior to those of many more civilised races. In their traditions, truths and absurdities are mingled. They have tolerably definite ideas of a great Being, who governs the universe, and many of their traditionary precepts bear a striking resemblance to those of the Gospel. Not being Buddhists, they have been persecuted by Buddhists, and this had, undoubtedly, disposed them more willingly to receive Chistian instruction. One of the earliest Protestant missionaries to Burmah was struck with groups of strange wild-looking men, clad in unshapely garments, who now and then passed his abode. He heard they were a numerous race, who kept aloof from other men, and were as untameable as the mountain birds. He redeemed one of them from slavery, and converted him. Through him his fellows were reached. They had no strong prejudices, professed no religion; their traditions led them to expect instruction from the west white-faced teachers, who were to give them knowledge of God. The missionaries brought civilisation with Christianity at all events, its rudiments; reading and writing were introduced, and the Kareens found to their amazement, that the meaning of a spoken word could be conveyed by a written sign. The two volumes devoted to Siam are extremely interesting, for we expect from the attainments and characters of the monarchs, that great changes will occur rapidly in that land to which the visit of the author-and the originator of the treatywill decidedly tend. The volumes abound in illustrations that supply, we believe, an accurate idea of the buildings or costumes which they repre sent. Ballads by Bon Gaultier's Grandsons I mean to punish perjured Pam for past official sins; I mean that all the "Ins" be "Outs," and all the "Outs" be "Ins;" And I must cull my choicest flowers of rhetoric, they sayAnd speak of murdered Chinamen, and that dove-like Governor Yeh ! Up with the Earl of Derby and down with "W. B. !" M.P.? He thought of that sharp speech, my dear, they fear so much, men say, When I'm to bully the Government for injured Governor Yeh ! They say Pam will to the country go-and what if so it be? What if his heart approved his acts-pray, what is that to me? 208 BALLADS BY BEN GAULTIER'S GRANDSONS. Not only we of Eighteen Fifty-Seven, Have loved ourselves full well and turned up trumps Then this poor boy wound slow his mournful way He and his cat, the solace of his sorrows, A very drudge for three long bitter years; The brother of the Sun and Moon, celestial "swell," C. O. CHAPTER VII. Broken memories of many a heart had gained the paternal consent, straightway proceeding once more to London, to take lessons till the time should arrive when he would be qualified, if nothing better offered, to teach others himself. Of course, his father hotly opposed the plan at first -but, being a man of easy temper, and having heard from several competent judges of his son's great proficiency in drawing, &c., he allowed John Sydney to start for London, with a promise, to cheer him on his way, that whatever in reason was necessary to his advancement would be provided, on condition that, as far as he could, he kept out of mischief. So now I have told you how John Sydney became an artist. He soon found, however, something more is required to make an artist thau a superficial knowledge of colour, light and shade, and elementary drawing; he found that nil sine magno labore is the great life-motto for all who would achieve eminence, or even a competence, by the work of their hands. But he was young and hopeful, and set to work to conquer art's early difficulties by patience. In the year 18-, John Sydney, the only son of a country clergyman, came up to London on a visit to his uncle, an eminent merchant, who, having left home some five-and-twenty years before, with nothing better than a few guineas in his pocket and his father's blessing, had by this time suc teeded, Midas-like, in turning all he touched to gold, by dint of lucky speculations, aided by his own good judgment, and becoming senior partner in the now flourishing firm of Sydney, Simpkin, and Co., Old Broad-street. Having thus disposed of the rich and respected uncle, Mr. Samuel Sydney, let me proceed in my own way to say a few words introductory of his scapegrace nephew, John. John Sydney had spent the greater part of his time abroad-having been educated at a con- Time wore away, and by degrees the young tinental school, and finished off at Heidelberg, artist's pictures began to be seen in conspicuous where he learned to smoke more Canaster than was corners of picture-dealers' windows, and quickly good for him, love schnaps, read, if not unto edifi- to fetch fair prices. Now began Sydney's trials; cation, Kant's philosophy, and to be about as having thus far satisfied his own conceit that he agreeable an idler as you would meet in a long was a genius-as, say what people may and do day's walk. But all these things, although say of the modesty of real talent, all clever men rendering him a very good companion over at some period of their lives do think-he became one's wine and walnuts, were in nowise fitted to idle and desultory, and, having fallen in with a produce favourable impressions on the mind of his clique after his own heart, men who were ever uncle, as to the business capabilities of the non-ready to acknowledge his merits, court his society, chalant young man, who one day jumped out of a and-truth must be spoken-occasionally_steal cab at No. Russell-Square, the residence of his designs, he soon ceased to care about art for its that most respectable of tallow-merchants, Samuel own sake, as an abstraction, and to regard it solely Sydney, Esq. It had occurred to our young in a concrete light as the mere means of paying Hopeful's father, Rev. Thomas Sydney, that his his rent and supplying his extravagances. About brother was the very man to further John's in- this time, he happened to meet at a conversazione a terests in life; for it happened that this well- Miss Bell, with whom he fell in love, and whom meaning parent had altogether mistaken the bias he married a few weeks after, with that impetuosity of his son's mind, which by no means tended which followed him through life. Of her I can towards Mr. Samuel Sydney's desks and high say little, save that she was a pretty, amiable stools in Old Broad-street. From his childhood little woman, devotedly attached to her husband, John had a taste for drawing, which had been pro- as he to her, but with little else to recommend her nounced by his master to be so correct that he, to your notice-one in every way unsuited to be the worthy master, had little doubt but that, with the wife of a man like John Sydney. Moreover, proper attention, his pupil might become a Mrs. Sydney had not a shilling, and he had never great man, if he would only devote himself entirely thought of the necessity for retrenching his exto bis easel hereafter. Now it likewise happened penditure when he married; so, a few weeks after that John Sydney was of this opinion himself; so, Jane Bell became the wife of John Sydney, “for finding that his uncle could offer him nothing but better or for worse, for richer or poorer" (if those a clerk's seat in Old Broad-street, he resolved on alternatives had any real existence at that time,) at once going down home, acquainting his father the young artist and his bride found themselves with his intention of turning artist, and, when he located in a garret in Newman-street, which has N been an artists' quarter from time immemorial. But Sydney, though idle and dissipated from evil influences, was really better than all this. He saw that something must be done that he must give up his loose bachelor acquaintances, work hard-in a word, paint or starve. So he painted away with new vigour, and his industry was duly rewarded. But prosperity is always more trying to men of his temperament than adversity; no sooner had he made for himself a small but safe connection among the picture-dealers and picture-buyers than he launched into fresh extravagances-took better lodgings, gave bachelor parties once more, and managed to spend rather more in one month than he could make in three. Too proud to apply to his father for assistance, too desultory now to face bis difficulties like a man, and curtail his ruinous expenditure, he soon experienced the manifold mortifications of genteel poverty, and, in proportion as he grew poorer, so did his wife become more delicate, and he more reckless. . Now there happened to be "a cloud with a silver lining" hovering over the Sydneys' lodgings in Newman-street just then; or, in plainer English, there was, among his miscellaneous acquaintances, an old Scotch picture-dealer, by name Sandy MacIan, who had now and then dropped in to smoke a cigar with Sydney, and had then and there conceived a strong liking for the young painter, and his pretty, ailing, little wife. "Mrs. Sydney," MacIan would say, "puts me much in mind of my poor darling Jessie, who married a young artist, and died at the birth of her first child in this very street." This reminiscence was often advantageous to Sydney in more ways than one. Old Sandy MacIan, as he was called by half the young "ne'er-do-wells" in Newman-street, was at bottom a kind-hearted man, -one who was often known to do the most generous things in the most crabbed way; to send anonymously a £10 note to some struggling young artist, while perhaps, at the very moment of its receipt, he was growling, like a caged bear, at his protège's shortcomings. He volunteered to lend Sydney a sum sufficient to relieve him from his difficulties, on the sole condition that the artist should work more and talk of work less; break off his acquaintance with the idle clique who had taken up his time, and smoked his cigars to no purpose; take a little cottage at Hampstead, which belonged to MacIan, and then and there begin a new life. Sydney gratefully accepted the old man's offer, and worked steadily at his easel till he was not only enabled to repay his friend, but had also in hand a sum sufficient for his daily exigencies for some time to come. And here, properly speaking, my story should begin. At this time his first child, a girl-a fair, fragile little thing, with her mother's deep blue eyes and flaxen hair-was born, and shortly after baptized, with MacIan as her godfather, "Marie," though what reason Sydney had for preferring a French name to the good old English appellative "Mary," Maclan was at a loss to conjecture. And now Sydney had an additional stimulus to exertion, and so worked manfully on, till he came in for his share of the world's much-coveted, unduly appreciated, “monstrari digito et dicier, hic est." He became, almost suddenly, a man of mark, whose pictures always commanded high prices, and was now on the high road to fame, when little Marie had learned to walk alone, and lisp her father's name, and a second child-another little fair-haired miniature-a more flattering likeness than the first of her mother, was born, and named Emily. And the painter's heart was glad, as on fine summer evenings, when his easel was thrown aside, he sat in his little garden, with his two little ones at his feet, and his fair young wife at his side, gazing out over London's miles of brick and mortar in the cool twilight, blandly smoking his cigar, and blessing old Sandy Maclan, who had taken him from his debt and duns and joyless extravagances, to set him down with a better heart of hope and hand of earnest in his happy Hampstead home. Time wore away-Marie was now fifteen, and Emily three years younger, and their happy father was celebrating the birthday of his elder daughter with a small party of friends-brother-artists and men of letters; and there, for the first time, he became acquainted with James Grey and John Savile, who had come with a mutual friend, for the purpose of introduction to the eminent painter, John Sydney, R.A. And to save myself the trouble hereafter, I may as well describe the two. Both were very young men, and as yet unknown to the world, but both had given much promise of future distinction, and Sydney had always a kindly word of cheer or good counsel for such. Grey, who was the elder of the two, was then a barrister of a year's standing-a slight, dark, haughty looking, handsome young man, with coldly regular features, and quiet, gentlemanlike manners; while Savile, a young author, whose name as yet was known only to the literary world as appended to a few stray poems in divers periodicals, was the reverse-a tall, German-looking, irregular-featured, broad-shouldered man, one whom men called "cranky," and women oddity,"—now joyous as a lark, and now gloomy as Democritus himself; one who, at that time at least, wore his heart too much upon his sleeve, as the phrase is, and so was constantly misinterpreted, even in his best motives, and doomed to meet scorn and coldness on all sides from the many who deemed his impetuous frankness ill-timed, or gave him credit for carrying his heart in his open hand, and formed their estimate of that honest heart's worth accordingly-and erroneously. an There was not more difference in feature than in mind between the two. Grey was one who would at all times have chosen the smooth expe dient before the rugged right; while Savile's high- | eyes of the painter's daughter, who, in some guise toned honour would never allow his sense of truth to be hoodwinked for a moment by any idea of mere self-interest. Men like Grey may often, by innate force of character, make their way into our respect; men like Savile seldom fail, in the long run, of securing our heart's love. Savile was a man at all times better than he seemed; Grey, a man who at all times seemed better than he was. Have I shadowed forth the characters of these two men aright? If anything be wanting, read on, and let my narration fill up the blanks. or other, was sure to be brought forward on the canvas of his most popular pictures. Emily, too, fast approaching womanhood, threatened to throw her quiet little sister into the shade by her striking beauty and showy accomplishments, which Marie had not; but Sydney, true to his artist-instinct, would often say to his friends with half-sigh, half-smile, that Emily surpassed her sister in beauty of form and feature, but was not to be compared to Marie, whose heart beamed through her deep blue eyes. And well might her fond father's partiality find A few years passed away, and Sydney's pictures excuse in truth; for during all her mother's illwere to be seen yearly in the best places at the ness Marie was ever the angel of his home. Το exhibition; Grey had made some successful her now her father looked for everything; she met speeches in Westminster Hall, and won a reputa-him at the breakfast table with a cheerful face, tion and a great cause in a single day; while Savile was still unknown, writing on cheerfully in his quiet lodgings in Islington, with nothing else to cheer him but a consciousness of dormant power, and one strong idea that he would yet do truth's work in his generation. One day, a book appeared with John Savile's name on its title-page, and from that hour its author's reputation was secure. It rarely happens that a man earns any lasting reputation by a first book; nevertheless, Savile was an exception to the rule. I remember that book well; I had read it through and through long ere I knew anything of its gifted author. It was, after all, nothing more than a simple domestic story, with no remarkable incidents therein; but that same simple story won a place for its author in the hearts of the book-reading public of England. "It was so touchingly true," said they-they saw themselves reflected in its pages, for good, for evil, real flesh and blood men, like Sydney, Grey, Savile himself, and the old picture-dealer; as for its women, its author had been obliged for once to draw upon his imagination for ideals-he was left an orphan early, had no female relations that he knew of, and at that time went but little into female society. Nevertheless, his women pleased the public. He drew his inspiration from truth, and Paternoster-row, which had snubbed him in days gone by, applauded his work to the echo now. And Grey read that book, and whenever he met its author at Sydney's table, loved to draw him out before his host's daughters, till they, poor silly little things, were of opinion that Grey was indeed the wittiest and most agreeable man they had ever met, and poor John Savile a mere bookseller's hack. And so Grey despised Savile's pet theories, and glowing enunciations of lofty abstract truths, while Savile hated Grey's witty worldliness and barren heart of unbelief. Marie had now grown up into a demure blueeyed little maiden, with as sweet a face as poet ever dreamed of, and her father had painted that sweet face over and over again, but still the world was not yet tired of the angel-smile and dove-like while Emily sat complaining in a corner, that she had sat up all night with her mother, and was worn out with her vigil-forgetting that dear little Marie had spent her days and nights, with little intermission, for more than a week past, in her mother's room-and yet no murmur ever escaped her lips. In a drawing-room, reader, you would perhaps have thought the quiet little girl, who sat silently in her arm-chair, with her head reclining on her hand, while her sister Emily was winning the hearts of all the young gentlemen in her vicinity, by her sprightly manner, silvery laugh, or exquisite warblings, a very commonplace young lady-one you would rather not pick as a partner for the next polka-and you would in that sense have been right, for the privacy of domestic life was the only scene where Sydney's "child-angel," as he lovingly nicknamed his elder daughter, appeared in her true character. So Miss Emily Sydney flirted, danced, and sang away, and so destroyed the peace of many eligible young men in irreproachable white waistcoats and neatest of neckcloths, till her presence became almost a sine que non to every party at any house to which the Sydneys had ever been invited, while Marie was voted slow and silent by half the simpering inanities of fashion. Grey had met the Misses Sydney out at sundry parties, and had made a similar observation; nevertheless, he had always felt inclined to alter his opinion when he saw Miss Sydney in her proper sphere-at home; while Savile, who, as I have said, at that time went little into female society, and had just arrived at that stage in the heart's history when something to love begins to be a want, might truly say of himself now, with St. Augustine in his beautiful "Confessions" :-" Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare;" and accordingly fell in love with Marie Sydney. But that young lady unfortunately in her heart of hearts dearly loved James Grey, to whom poor Savile superficially presented an unfavourable contrast, while the brilliant Emily, too, in spite of numerous offers from men in a worldly point of view far more eligible than the young barrister, loved Grey as deeply as women of her nature can |