foot grows at the end of her tongue. [Is compressing the feet a more foolish custom than tight-lacing? It is certainly less dangerous to health.] One day is as good as three, if you do every thing at its proper time.-The less indulgence you yield to yourself, the more you have to spare for others. Rich folk find relations in the most distant lands; the poor find none, not even in the bosom of their own family.-The truths which we are the least fond of learning, are those which it most behoves us to know. We pardon everything in the person who never pardons himself.-Rich people have the greatest number of wants.-We ought not to employ those whom we suspect, nor suspect those whom we employ.-You never need have all your wits about you so much as when you have to do with a fool. — Dissolute prince, pitiless master. Marble, however polished it may be, is not the less cold nor hard for that; the same is the case with courtiers. It is better to save one dying man, than to bury a hundred dead. The leading feature of Chinese morality is filial piety; it is the starting-point of every virtue, of every social duty, the basis of family ties, the principle of government, the fundamental law of all other laws. Consequently, the penal code of China contains several clauses concerning the duties of children towards their father and mother. It stigmatises as impious whoever brings a lawsuit against his near relations, insults them, or omits to put on mourning for them. The obligatory rules for mourning are three years for relations of the first degree, nine months for those of the second, five for those of the third degree, and three months for the rest. Death is the punishment for striking one's senior relations, for insulting or falsely accusing them. Parricide, in particular, is punished by torture to death with knives. The writings of philosophers, the proclamations of emperors, the addresses of mandarins, are continually eulogising filial piety, and invoking it on every occasion, even à propos of resistance to authority, disobedience to the law, infringements of the rights of property, and attempts on the life of others. On the other hand, they refer to filial piety, acts of obedience, compassion, probity, and courage. In consequence of this principle, the titles of the first mandarins are transmissible not to their sons but to their ancestors. By an honorary right, the glory acquired by a son reverts to his father. Confucius, in reply to his disciple Tse-hia, who asked, "How ought a son to behave to the enemy of his father?" answered, "He will lie down to sleep in garments of mourning, with no pillow but his weapons; he will accept no employment, and will not suffer his father's enemy to remain on the earth. If he meets him, whether in the market or in the palace court, he will not return home to fetch his arms, but will attack him on the spot." He moreover said, "Your father's murderer ought not to remain beneath the same sky with yourself; you must not lay down your arms whilst your brother's murderer exists; and you cannot dwell in the same kingdom with the murderer of your friend." Confucius might have done better had he advised an appeal to the law for the punishment of the murderer; but his words are only the expression of a noble sentiment pushed to the extreme. According to law, a father may, first, sell, pledge, hire, or bind his children; secondly, keep them always in a state of minority; thirdly, dispose by will of the whole of his property to their prejudice; and, fourthly, at any time reassert his paternal rights. At his death, the paternal uncle, or the elder brother, inherits those rights. The law even pursues any neglect of the mourning prescribed for near relations. The dominant power of filial love is expressed by numerous sayings which are in everybody's mouth; such as: A good son never believes that he has succeeded in any undertaking until he has obtained the suffrage of his father.-To praise a son, is to boast of oneself; to blame a father, is to disgrace oneself.-What a good son fears, is, not the threats, the reproaches, nor the violence of his father, but his silence.-A good son, is a good brother, a good husband, a good father, a good relation, a good friend, a good neighbour, and a good citizen; a bad son, is nothing but a bad son.-He who fears that the thunder-bolt should wake his parents, has no fear on his own account.-Respect and love are the two wings of filial piety. In spite of this worship paid by the son to the parent, there are laws and customs which offer a sad contrast to its spirit. Thus, a son must refuse to recognise as his mother his father's wife, if repudiated by him, and also his widow, if she marries again. The son of one of his father's secondary wives must obey and serve the first wife as if she were his mother, and wear mourning for her, to the exclusion of his real mother. It ought to be stated, to Confucius's honour, that he did not dictate any of these arbitrary and inconsistent laws; they were introduced by Buddhist or Tartar influence, and made to prevail over his more natural teachings. A singular mode of testifying filial piety consists in preparing, during the lifetime of a father or mother, the coffin destined to receive the remains. The sum expended on this ill-omened present is large in proportion to the strength of affection which it is proposed to manifest. It is presented with all due form, in the hope of causing an agreeable surprise. The serious illness of a parent affords the opportunity of displaying a lively interest in his health, by bringing the coffin and placing it close to his bed; he can then die with the delightful satisfaction of knowing that everything has been prepared to render him due funereal honour. The coffin in China plays the same part that the viaticum does in Roman Catholic countries. This custom habituates them to regard the approach of death without emotion. Chinese persons in easy circumstances find a pleasure in undertaking their own proper funerals and arranging a bier that suits their taste. Although the supernatural occupies a certain the great men and by the head of the state amount of space in Chinese tradition, it remains himself. The last emperor, Tao-kouang, a rather in the state of superstition than of re- short time before his accession to the throne, ligious belief. Heaven, or the Supreme Being, addressed a proclamation to the people, in which, hold, with them, the place of our Providence; passing in review all known religions, Christhey invoke it as an expression of Infinite tianity included, he came to the conclusion that Power, but do not honour it either with all were false alike, and merited equal contempt. sacrifices or with public prayers. In short, there If, therefore, Christians are persecuted at the is no state religion in China; the prevailing present day, it is on account of their private form of worship, if we can give it that name, meetings, which it is feared may degenerate into consists in manifestations of filial piety, prac- political associations formed expressly to open tised in honour of Heaven, the emperor, and China to Occidental nations. Besides, it is a parents. Nevertheless, certain solemn days are logical effect of their religious apathy that the consecrated to spirits, while others are devoted Chinese should be unable to understand why we to the carrying of offerings to the temples of should travel so far and encounter such sufferBuddha. The pagodas are the object of fre-ings for the sake of teaching them miraculous quent processions, and the tombs of ancestors facts and doctrines, which are admitted by their are altars around which families unite to pay propagators themselves to be mysterious and homage to dear or illustrious memories. The difficult of explanation. bonzes and bonzesses are mendicants rather than an officiating priesthood. The indifference of the Chinese in matters of religion explains the difficulty which Christianity meets with in taking root in the Celestial Epire. There exists no trace of its introduction before the end of the sixteenth century, when Father Ricci contrived to penetrate into the interior. In 1724, the Emperor Young-tching proscribed the new worship, not as a religion, but as being the cause or the pretext of secret societies, of meetings of men and women, contrary to law. The Tat-sin-leu-li contains the following article (section 162): "When it shall be discovered that have secretly offered inpersons cense at the performances of prohibited modes of worship, and have assembled their followers during the night to instruct them in their maxims, the principal minister of those abominations shall be imprisoned for the prescribed period, and then strangled. His disciples shall each receive a hundred strokes of the bamboo, and shall be banished for life." This is plain speaking. Three of the principal Jesuits who were then at the Court of Pekin having petitioned the emperor to revise his decision, he replied: "You say that your law is not a false law. If I thought that it was false, who could hinder me from demolishing your churches and expelling you? False laws are those which, under the pretext of inculcating virtue, fan the spirit of revolt. But what would you say if I were to send a troop of bonzes and lamas into your country to preach their laws? How would you receive them? You wish all the Chinese to turn Christians but the Christians whom you make acknowledge no one but you. In troubled times they would listen to you, and to no one else. I know that at present there is nothing to fear; but when vessels arrive by thousands and tens of thousands, disorders might arise." But the missionaries have encountered fewer obstacles in the ill will of the government than in the indifference of the people. Only recently M. Huc has informed us of their disdainfully repulsing the Roman Catholic faith. Indifference in religious matters is not peculiar to the people alone; it is participated by Pac-king, viceroy of the province of Tsetchouan, inquired of M. Huc, the missionary, where he wished to go. 66 We want to go to Thibet," was the reply. "What business calls you there?" "The preaching of the Christian religion." "You had better go and preach it at home." TO NICEA, THE BIRTHPLACE OF NICEA! thou wast rear'd of those Far from home Years had past, Hence was thy name, Ionian town! Thou livest undejected yet, ALL THE YEAR ROUND. No, no; that city is not lost, VERY SINGULAR THINGS IN Ir is a singular thing that all the working engineers, and stout-armed "navigators" who planned, and dug out, and built up the Great Northern Railway, were compelled, before they commenced their labours, to wait for the oath of one man, who happened to be William James Robson, the future forger. The "compulsory powers" of a railway act cannot be put in force, and the "first sod" of a railway cannot be turned, until oath has been made before a magistrate that a certain amount of "capital" has been subscribed. The man who cast up the sums contained in the "deed of subscription," and who certified that the requisite amount was secured, was William James Robson, a lawyer's clerk, who was afterwards in the Crystal Palace share office in the City of London. [July 14, 1860.] 325 some of his directors and fellow-labourers were afraid of losing so valuable and important a servant! It is a still more singular thing that if an inquiry had been at once instituted in 1852, when the first warning of "payments in excess of dividends" should have been noticed and acted upon, the delinquent would have stolen only about seventy thousand pounds, instead of two hundred and forty thousand. It is a singular thing that the chief auditor chosen for the accounts of this vast and comrespectable merchant, no doubt, but one who had been so unsuccessful in "auditing" his own plicated enterprise, should have been a highly business transactions, that in the course of eleven years he had been robbed by a clerk of thirty thousand pounds. It is a singular feature in the life of this auditor, that he never saw Redpath in his life. Redpath was about the office, to some purpose, for nearly ten years; but the leading auditor never saw him, to his knowledge, on any occasion. and that Mr. Leopold Redpath kept his banking It is a singular thing that this same auditor account at this bank. It is not to be presumed was a Director of the Union Bank of London; that an auditor of a railway, who never saw its chief registrar, and that registrar so remarkable It is a very singular thing that a railway set in know much about the nature, amount, and chamotion, so to speak, by such a man, and falling, racter of the different bank accounts. An aua man, should, in his capacity of a bank director, as early as 1848, into the hands of an ambitious ditor who led the way in signing that extracostermonger, named Leopold Redpath, was not ordinary document (detailed at page 203, in robbed to a much greater extent than nearly a No. 59 of this journal), wherein it was stated quarter of a million sterling. It is a singular that the "accounts and books in every departthing that a Board of Directors should have ment" of the Great Northern Railway, were engaged this man without knowing that he once hawked fish and poultry about the streets of months before the great forger was brought to "correct and most satisfactorily kept," about five Folkestone, Kent; that he was successively a justice, could hardly be expected to pry much lawyer's clerk, a shipping clerk, and a bankrupt into bank ledgers, or to gather much information "insurance-broker," paying half-a-crown in the if he did pry. Perhaps he relied too much pound. It is a singular thing that these directors upon the "Governor" of the Union Bank, Sir should have placed this man in an office where Peter Laurie, and upon this worthy magistrate's the secretary's signature was kept in the form world-famous reputation for "putting" everyof a stamp, which stamp was in a wooden book- thing like an irregularity "down." case, accessible to any clerk, at any hour of the such as Redpath must have kept at the Union day, for the purpose of signing "stock certifi- Bank, must have been highly "irregular," and An account, cates." It is a singular thing, in an undertaking must have shown suspicious "irregularities," representing some five millions of capital, that for a railway servant, to say nothing of an ex'stock certificates" duly signed, but brought fish and poultry hawker, and a bankrupt inin, under the operation of sales on the Stock surance-broker. Exchange, to be cancelled, were put away uncancelled in an ordinary cupboard, open to every flourishing joint-stock bank, with its many one employed in the "registrar's office." It is branches, was William George Pullinger, the It is a singular thing that in this large and a singular thing that when large irregularities chief of modern forgers. He has been hurried on the part of Mr. Registrar Redpath were dis-off the scene in a very summary way, and is covered two years and a half before his directors beyond the reach of cross-examination; but it had the courage to arrest him for fraud, he was requires little knowledge of his transactions to allowed to pay back certain sums of money, by opine that he was not ignorant of Leopold which he stopped inquiry. It is a singular thing Redpath's operations. He could not copy the that if his career had been cut short at this point, ex-fish and poultry hawker, by manufacturing at Midsummer, 1854, and had not been suffered shares, but he could extract even more gold to extend to Christmas, 1856, the shareholders from his employers' pockets with a simple would have saved about seventy thousand "pass-book." A "pass-book" costs only a few pounds in shares and dividends. the price of a coarse and vulgar crowbar. The shillings at any City stationer's, or less than little profit that the Union Bank of London this, he was allowed to take a lofty tone about Instead of his means and position "as a gentleman," and secured by harbouring the banking account of railways-perhaps of all; and the second sum Leopold Redpath, Esq.," the bankrupt insur- would probably do the same for all the jointance-broker, was more than counterbalanced, in stock banks. It is a singular thing that shareall probability, by the bad example it placed be- holders, at present, are blind to this, and are fore the bank clerks. It is evident that William satisfied with a few respectable, fully occupied, George Pullinger was not improved by coming middle-aged gentlemen "auditors," who manage into contact with a banking account like Red- to "run in" to glance at the books and vouchers path's; and it is evident that the Union Bank about twelve times, or less, in the course of the of London was not improved by the demoralisa- year. It is a singular thing that these sharetion of William George Pullinger. One of the holders look to future economy and future profit, statements to be submitted to the suffering to cover these heavy and periodical losses by shareholders at the next half-yearly meeting in fraud: forgetting that the future money saved July, should run thus: or made is not the money that was lost, and that the same economy and industry might have been practised without the unhealthy spurring on of gigantic forgers, and thieves. SPECIAL PROFIT AND LOSS ACCOUNT (No. 1). Showing gain by a Fraudulent Customer; and loss by a Fraudulent Clerk. It is a singular thing that the estimated item of thirty thousand pounds for "interest" has not yet appeared in any directorial statement of the amount of Pullinger's frauds. The capital so fully employed by Pullinger, might have been profitably employed by the bank, for it is evident that as they never missed it, when it was stolen, it must have been an idle and unnecessary lance." There is an evil sometimes, it would seem, in being excessively prosperous. On the other hand, it is an equally singular thing that men of position, of means, and reputation, can be found to fill the chairs of amateur auditorship, for dinners, small patronage, and trifling fees. A new piano for Miss ". Auditor," a new dress for Mrs." Auditor," a family trip to Germany, or Italy, a few banquets at town and suburban taverns, may be very agreeable things in their way, if they be not purchased at too great a cost. A few "attendances," a few "signatures" may not appear much to give for such luxuries, if the responsibility incurred is carefully forgotten. The capital invested in British railways alone, is estimated at four hundred millions sterling. It is all "audited" by these daring amateurs. HIGHLY IMPROBABLE! THE apartments assigned to Solomon Gunn, when-goodness knows why he entered the old wilderness of an inn in the dirty town of Wake, consisted of a sitting-room and bed-chamber, ad"ba-joining each other, and both opening on a long corridor. The windows of the sitting-room looked into the main street, the one window of the bedchamber into a narrow lane that ran along the side of the house. It is a very singular thing that shareholders, in the face of such warnings as these, should still cling to an empty, because a low-priced, system of In the sitting-room, hung against the wall that audit. Whenever their affairs are purposely en- parted it from the bed-chamber, were two grim tangled by men like Leopold Redpath, and they portraits, such as you may find by the dozen in have to call in professional accountants, and re- the course of a journey through any of the brokersort to an independent investigation," they shop neighbourhoods of London. One reprethen learn that real auditing is a necessary part sented a military gentleman, with a cocked hat, of a business organisation, and that it becomes the other, a venerable civilian, with a bobwig; all the more costly the longer it has been ne- and both were executed in that wooden fashion glected. The damage done to a large enterprise which repels the mind from the supposition that by half-shareholder, half-honorary, five, ten, fifteen, and twenty-pounds-charging auditors is any live specimen of humanity ever favoured the seldom even explained, and never repaired by artist with a sitting. Nothing could be less refive, ten, fifteen, and twenty-thousand-pounds-markable than the circumstance that two ugly, charging accountants. The frauds of Redpath, if taken at five per cent. upon the amount, will represent an income for ever, of twelve thousand pounds per annum. The frauds of Pullinger, if treated in the same way, will represent a perpetual annual income of fourteen thousand and five hundred pounds. The first sum would surely pay for the continuous and only effective audit of many British old-fashioned pictures decorated the wall of a country inn; but it was very remarkable, indeed, that when Solomon Gunn stepped into the bedchamber he found the same wall ornamented on the other side with two pictures representing the backs-yes, the backs-of the gentlemen in the adjoining room. Moreover, the pictures in the bed-chamber were so placed that they exactly corresponded to their companions in the sitting room-as exactly as if they had been the same articles painted on both sides, and fitted into a couple of apertures. Indeed, as they were painted on wood, and therefore returned a ligneous sound to inquiring knuckles, this might have actually been the case for all Mr. Solomon Gunn knew to the contrary. is the reverse of exciting. It was rather with a gloomy listlessness, therefore, that Solomon Gunn hung over the very large globe of gold-fish that was placed in one of the corners of his sittingroom : though, indeed, those fish were curious beyond the average, being marked with a combination of red, yellow, and black, which in a cat would have been called tortoiseshell. It was not till Solomon Gunn was in bed, that the gold-fish began to make any impression on his mind. He was very restless, sometimes fancying that he was sitting with his back to a sign-painter, who was taking his likeness; sometimes imagining that his body was in a first-class railway-carriage, while his head was in the lug The connoisseur of art is in the habit of walking round sculptured works, and contemplating them from various points of view, but few minds are prepared to find that a painted portrait has a back as well as a front. The antagonistic notions of flatness and solidity jarred together disagreeably in Solomon Gunn's mind, and caused it to fall into a morbid state of credulity, such as we feel in dreams. If the world ever contained a mili-gage-van; and when he woke from the sort of tary hero and a civilian who insisted on having their backs and their pig-tails copied, by way of completion to the portraiture of their faces, what might it not contain? Had the waiter been more communicative, perhaps some light might have been thrown on the extraordinary whim of the two venerable gentlemen, but, as it happened, the waiter was a taciturn, cadaverous-looking little man, who seemed always in a fidget to perform his duties as quickly as possible, and bustle out of the room. "Very odd, those pictures!" Solomon Gunn contrived to ejaculate. "Werry odd, werry odd, indeed; in short, it's an odd world altogether, as well I knows to my cost," was the only response. doze that produced these vanities, his eye glanced at the pattern of his bed-curtain, which was faintly illuminated by a rushlight. Singular! the pattern was composed of fish, coloured exactly in the same manner as those that peopled the globe in the sitting-room. This fact was so remarkable, that Solomon Gunn got out of bed, and stepped into the sitting-room to ascertain, by renewed observation, whether the real and the mimic fish were really semblances of each other, or whether his memory had been treacherous. No-his memory had been faithful. The gaslight outside, which shone powerfully into the room, showed him that the fish on the curtain veritably corresponded to those in the globe. Chimney ornaments, when composed of fragile materials, are always among the first victims of mischance, and if endowed with consciousness, would look forward to a general dusting as some South American people anticipate periodical earthquakes. The fact, therefore, that all the shepherds, shepherdesses, and Cupids that en-every-day world of shops and thoroughfares. livened the mantelpiece of the sitting-room had lost their heads, was scarcely worthy of a passing observation. Still, Solomon Gunn's surprise was natural, when on the mantelpiece of the bed-chamber he found all the detached heads carefully placed on little velvet-covered stands, and shielded from dust by glass receivers, whereas the truncated carcases were exposed to the effect of every simoom that the house-broom might engender. There was something frightful in this series of inconsistent consistencies. We can scarcely describe the feeling with which he walked up to one of the windows of the sitting-room, and looked into the main street, as if anxious to ascertain whether or not he belonged to the ordinary Curious, those images!" said Solomon Gunn to the waiter. 'Werry cur'ous, werry cur'ous, indeed! In short, it's a cur'ous world altogether, as well I knows to my cost," was still the answer. The waiter was hopeless; he had evidently been trained to a theory that the universe is a system of incongruities, all equally inexplicable, and, therefore, in perfect harmony with each other. Perhaps, of all the animals that are kept for the recreation of mankind, the gold-fish is, after the first glance, the least interesting. That a well-stocked globe looks pretty in a luxuriously furnished apartment, is not to be denied ; but such a globe offered as a sole object of contemplation, The clock of the nearest church was booming one, the shops were all shut, and the pavement was trod by a single person-a child of about three years old, who, with the greatest gravity, was drawing a little cart. A respectably dressed child too, that seemed perfectly satisfied with its occupation. This was a strange phenomenon at one o'clock in the morning. Whilst the eyes of Solomon Gunn were riveted on this lonely child, he heard the tramp of an approaching policeman. The functionary of justice soon appeared, preceded by the radiating light of his official bull's-eye. He was on the same side of the way as the child, whom, of course, he would accost, and probably take to the station-house, as a place-not of harsh confinement, but of hospitable refuge. No, he did nothing of the kind; he passed the child, without so much as a moment's pause, and continued his walk till he was lost in the distance. To suppose that he did not see the urchin, would be to suppose an impossibility, for it moved along the middle of the pavement, and the gas shone strongly upon it. Presently Solomon Gunn heard the sound of wheels, and in a few moments an empty fourwheeled cab stopped at the edge of the pavc |