too, towards those of our own Caucasian blood, where there is no instinct of race to excuse their unjust prejudice. Why is it that the virtue of Exeter Hall and Stafford House can tolerate this fact without a blush, yet condemn, with pharisaic zeal, the social inequality of the negro and the white races in America?

We fear there is too much ground for this indignant remonstrance. But neither Exeter Hall nor Stafford House approve of the treatment which the American stranger so justly censures. The friends of Exeter Hall are those with whom native servants find kind friends and sweet words. They do blush at the haughty and proud demeanour of their countrymen, and have frequently protested against it; not like Mr. Taylor on ethnological grounds, but because it is as unchristian as it is unkind.

On quitting India, Mr. Taylor turned his face towards China, and spent a considerable time at the various ports open for English and American trade. In his journal appear many items of information concerning the manners of the Chinese, which we have not seen noticed elsewhere. He is everywhere, when such prejudices as those to which we have just alluded do not interpose, the same careful observer, photographing the various scenes of interest which passed before his view: but to this work he confines himself. We shall only quote an extract or two descriptive of Shanghai and its neighbourhood. In the following passage, he gives us a picture of the banks of the Woosung, the river on which Shanghai is situated :

"The country on both sides of the river is a dead level of rich alluvial soil, devoted principally to the culture of rice and wheat. The cultivation was as thorough and patient as any I had seen, every square foot being turned to some useful account. Even the sides of the dykes erected to check inundations were covered with vegetables. These boundless levels are thickly studded with villages and detached houses, all of which are surrounded with fruit-trees. I noticed also occasionally groves of willow and bamboo. The country, far and wide, is dotted with little mounds of earth-the graves of former generations. They are scattered over the fields and gardens in a most remarkable manner, to the great detriment of the cultivators. In some places the coffins of the poor, who cannot afford to purchase a resting-place, are simply deposited upon the ground, and covered with canvass. The dwellings, but for their peaked roofs, bore some resemblance to the cottages of the Irish peasantry. They were mostly of wood, plastered and whitewashed, and had an appearance of tolerable comfort. The people, who came out to stare in wonder at the great steamer as she passed, were dressed uniformly in black or dark blue. Numerous creeks and canals extended from the river into the plains, but I did not notice a single highway.

The landscape was rich, picturesque and animated, and fully corresponded with what I had heard of the dense population and careful agriculture of China. I was struck with the general resemblance between the Woosung and the lower Mississippi, and the same thing was noticed by others on board."

After residing for a month at Shanghai, during the numerous panics which prevailed there, after the victorious insurgents had taken Nankin, our author gives the following account of the appearance and arrangement of the city:

"We now enter an outer street, leading to the northern gate of the city. It is narrow, paved with rough stones, and carpeted with a deposit of soft mud. The houses on either hand are of wood, two stories high, and have a dark, decaying air. The lower stories are shops, open to the street, within which the pig-tailed merchants sit behind their counter, and look at us out of the corners of their crooked eyes, as we go by. The streets are filled with a crowd of porters, water-carriers, and other classes of the labouring population, and also during the past week or two, with the families and property of thousands of the inhabitants, who are flying into the country, in anticipation of war. At the corners of the streets are stands for the sale of fruit and vegetables, the cheaper varieties of which can be had in portions valued at a single cash-the fifteenth part of a cent. A bridge of granite slabs crosses the little stream of which I have already spoken, and after one or two turnings we find ourselves at the city gate. It is simply a low stone arch, through a wall ten feet thick, leading into a sort of bastion for defence, with an inner gate. Within the space is a guard-house, where we see some antiquated instruments, resembling pikes and halberds, leaning against the wall, but no soldiers. A manifesto issued by the Taou-tai-probably some lying report of a victory over the rebels-is pasted against the inner gate, and there is a crowd before it, spelling out its black and vermilion hieroglyphics.

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Turning to the left, we advance for a short distance along the inside of the wall, which is of brick, about twenty feet thick, with a notched parapet. Carefully avoiding the heaps of filth, and the still more repulsive beggars that line the path, we reach a large, blank building, about two hundred feet square. This is a pawnbroker's shop-for the Chinese are civilized enough for that-and well worth a visit. The front entrance admits us into the office, where the manager and his attendants are busily employed behind a high counter, and a crowd of applicants fills the space in front. We apply for permission to inspect the establishment, which is cheerfully granted; a side-door is opened, and we enter a long range of store-houses, filled to the ceiling with every article of a Chinese household or costume, each piece being folded up separately, numbered and labelled. One room is appropriated wholly to the records, or books registering the articles deposited. There are chambers containing thousands of pewter candlesticks; court-yards piled with braziers; spacious lofts, stuffed to

the ceiling with the cotton gowns and petticoat-pantaloons of the poorer classes, and chests, trunks, boxes and other cabinet-ware in bewildering quantities. At a rough estimate, I should say that there are at least 30,000 costumes; when we asked the attendant the number, he shrugged his shoulders and said: "Who could count them ? " There are three or four other establishments, of nearly similar magnitude, in the city. They are regulated by the Government, and are said to be conducted in a fair and liberal spirit. * * *

"We now take a street which strikes into the heart of the city, and set out for the famous "Tea Gardens." The pavement is of rough stones, slippery with mud, and on one side of the street is a ditch filled with black, stagnant slime, from which arises the foulest smell. Porters, carrying buckets of offal, brush past us; public cloaca stand open at the corners, and the clothes and persons of the unwashed laborers and beggars distil a reeking compound of still more disagreeable exhalations. Coleridge says of Cologne:

"I counted two and seventy stenches,

All well defined-and several stinks;"

but Shanghai, in its horrid foulness, would be flattered by such a description. I never go within its walls but with a shudder, and the taint of its contaminating atmosphere seems to hang about me like a garment long after I have left them. Even in the country, which now rejoices in the opening spring, all the freshness of the season is destroyed by the rank ammoniated odors arising from pits of noisome manure, sunk in the fields. Having mentioned these things, I shall not refer to them again; but if the reader would have a correct description of Shanghai, they cannot be wholly ignored.

"It requires some care to avoid contact with the beggars who throng the streets, and we would almost as willingly touch a man smitten with leprosy, or one dying of the plague. They take their stations in front of the shops, and supplicate with a loud, whining voice, until the occupant purchases their departure by some trifling alms; for they are protected by the law in their avocation, and no man dare drive them forcibly from his door. As we approach the central part of the city, the streets become more showy and a trifle cleaner. The shops are large and well arranged, and bright red signs, covered with golden inscriptions, swing vertically from the eaves. All the richest shops, however, are closed at present, and not a piece of the celebrated silks of Soo-Chow, the richest in China, is to be found in the city. The manufactures, in jade-stone, carved bamboo, and the furniture of Ningpo, inlaid with ivory and boxwood, are still to be had in profusion, but they are more curious than elegant. Indeed, I have seen no article of Chinese workmanship which could positively be called beautiful, unless it was fashioned after a European model. Industry, perseverance, and a wonderful faculty of imitation belong to these people; but they are utterly destitute of original taste."

With our author the Chinese find no favour, either as to their taste or their morality. He gives a severe sketch of both :

"They are broad-shouldered and deep-chested, but the hips and loins are clumsily moulded, and the legs have a coarse, clubby character. We should never expect to see such figures assume the fine, free attitudes of ancient sculpture. But here, as every where, the body is the expression of the spiritual nature. There is no sense of what we understand by Art-Grace, Harmony, Proportion-in the Chinese nature, and therefore we look in vain for any physical expression of it. De Quincey, who probably never saw a Chinaman, saw this fact with the clairvoyant eye of genius, when he said: ' If I were condemned to live among the Chinese, I should go mad.' This is a strong expression, but I do not hesitate to adopt it. **** "The great aim of the Chinese florist is to produce something as much unlike nature as possible, and thus this blossom, which, for aught I know, may be pure white, or yellow, in its native state, is changed into a sickly, mongrel color, as if it were afflicted with a vegetable jaundice, or leprosy. There was a crowd of enthusiastic admirers around each of the ugliest specimens, and I was told that one plant, which was absolutely loathsome and repulsive in its appearance, was valued at three hundred dollars. The only taste which the Chinese exhibit to any degree, is a love of the monstrous. That sentiment of harmony, which throbbed like a musical rhythm through the life of the Greeks, never looked out of their oblique Their music is a dreadful discord; their language is composed of nasals and consonants; they admire whatever is distorted or unnatural, and the wider its divergence from its original beauty or symmetry, the greater is their delight.

eyes.

"This mental idiosyncrasy includes a moral one, of similar character. It is my deliberate opinion that the Chinese are, morally, the most debased people on the face of the earth. Forms of vice which in other countries are barely named, are in China so common, that they excite no comment among the natives. They constitute the surface-level, and below them there are deeps on deeps of depravity so shocking and horrible, that their character cannot even be hinted. There are some dark shadows in human nature, which we naturally shrink from penetrating, and I made no attempt to collect information of this kind; but there was enough in the things which I could not avoid seeing and hearing-which are brought almost daily to the notice of every foreign resident-to inspire me with a powerful aversion to the Chinese race. Their touch is pollution, and, harsh as the opinion may seem, justice to our own race demands that they should not be allowed to settle on our soil. Science may have lost something, but mankind has gained, by the exclusive policy which has governed China during the past centuries."

The chief object of Mr. Taylor's visit to China was that he might, if practicable, procure an appointment in connection

with the American expedition to Japan: and thus share in all the novelties expected from the proposed visit. Through the kindness of Commodore Perry, he was appointed a "master's mate" in his flag-ship, the Susquehanna: the office, though nominally a naval one, being reserved for the more scientific or literary members of the mission. The three other "master's mates" in the expedition were an artist, a photographer, and a telegraphist. No other supernumeraries were allowed. The expedition consisted of the large steam frigates the Susquehanna and Mississippi, with the Saratoga and Plymouth sloops; the whole being under the orders of Commodore Perry as envoy extraordinary to the Government of Japan. The official account of the expedition has just been published, and all its proceedings are fully detailed. Mr. Taylor speaks but little of the political matters in which he was mixed up, and confines himself rather to pleasant sketches of the localities he visited. Here is a picture of the island of Great Loo-Choo :

"The island is one of the most beautiful in the world, and con. tains a greater variety of scenery than I have ever seen within the same extent of territory. The valleys and hill-sides are cultivated with a care and assiduity, which puts even Chinese agriculture to shame; the hills are crowned with picturesque groves of the LooChoo pine, a tree which the artist would prize much more highly than the lumberman; the villages are embowered with arching lanes of bamboo, the tops of which interlace and form avenues of perfect shade; while, from the deep indentations of both shores, the road along the spinal ridge of the island commands the most delightful prospects of bays and green headlands, on either side. In the sheltered valleys, the clusters of sago-palm and banana trees give the landscape the character of the Tropics: on the hills, the forests of pine recall the scenery of the Temperate Zone. The northern part of the island abounds with marshy thickets and hills overgrown with dense woodland, infested with wild boars, but the southern portion is one vast garden.

"The villages all charmed us by the great taste and neatness displayed in their construction. In the largest of them there were buildings called cung-quas, erected for the accommodation of the agents of the Government, on their official journeys through the island. They were neat wooden dwellings, with tiled roofs, the floors covered with soft matting, and the walls fitted with sliding screens, so that the whole house could be thrown open, or divided into rooms, at pleasure. They were surrounded with gardens, enclosed by trim hedges, and were always placed in situations where they commanded the view of a pleasant landscape. These buildings were appropriated to our use, and when, after a hard day's tramp, we had hoisted our flag on the roof, and stretched ourselves out to rest on the soft matting, we would not have exchanged places with the old Viceroy himself."