CHUSAN AND THE CHINESE EXPEDITION.-SERVICE OF THE MOSQUE.

manufacture of porcelain; when at Nanking and Soochow, we were in Keang-nan, which yields some of the best green tea; when at Hang-chowfoo, we stood at the point which is intermediate between Keang-nan and Chekeang, the land of green teas and silks, as Fuh-keen, which is just below it, is the region for the cultivation of the black teas; and, lastly, when at Teen-tsin, we saw the commercial doings by which Peking is supplied. Now it would appear from what we have said that Keang-soo is the province of which we should take immediate possession, or, in other words, that portion of the Chinese territories which extends from the Chusan river to the Yang-tsze-keang, because we should thus include Nanking, Soochow, Hang-chow, and Shang-hae within our jurisdiction, and could, by means of our steamers running north, west, and south, upon the rivers, canals, and lakes, effectually keep the Chinese, or rather the Tartar authorities from molesting those natives who were willing to trade with us upon equitable terms. It may be said that justice would interpose, and forbid our taking such a step. To which we reply by saying, that we have as much right to Keangnan as we have to Chusan, and that the Chinese, after declaring war by seizing our representative and various other acts of hostility, and, lastly, by cheating us egregiously through a system of mock negotiation, are, according to the jus belli recognised from time immemorial, entitled to such terms only as we might think fit to prescribe. To God alone should we be responsible for the mode in which we administered our new ascendancy, who requires of the ruler as well as of the private individual, that he should deal justly and love mercy. This we should do, we trust, in a manner worthy of that enlightened elevation of Christian philanthropy to which we are aspiring.

In the fertile regions of Keang-nan and Chekeang, the trumpet of jubilee would sound the sacred notes of freedom, which the great river would convey to the fair waters of Poyang, where the distant mountains would catch the echo and

transmit it to the aboriginal sons of independence who lodge amidst the wild heights and deep valleys of Kwei-chow and Keang-se. Even the unsubdued inhabitants of Yunnan, "where there is gold," would feel some of the pulsations as they ascended the various tributaries of the Yang-tsze-keang. Hoo-nam, the garden of China, where Füh-he held his court, and Hoo-pih, the granary of China, both of which are interlaced by the channel or the auxiliar streams of the river just mentioned, would feel the impulses of that change which was spreading itself far and wide, and hasten to participate in its advantages. The rugged mountains of Shantung, and the diffusive plains of Pih-chih-le, would not remain altogether unmoved; while Se-chuen, Kansuh, Shense, and Shanse would hail an occasion for which some of them have often sought but could not find.-G. T. L.

SERVICE OF THE MOSQUE.

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I HAVE often stood by mosques, and observed the conduct of those who entered, as far as I was permitted. They first lay aside all gorgeous dress, so unsuited to the humility they should feel, and they all approach in decent et plain attire. There is generally a tank or reservoir of water, to perform the vodu, a necessary preliminary to prayer, where they wash, to purify themselves from external defilement. Mahomet says, that the practice of religion is found in cleanliness, and that it is the key of prayer. They then proceed with a serious, and indeed solemn air, to the porch, seldom interchanging a word, but apparently meditating on what they are about to do. At the door they drop their slippers and enter barefoot, conformably to God's direction to Moses, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou treadest is holy ground." When entered, they turn to a niche, called Al Mehrâb, which points out the direction of Mecca; and then kneeling, they prostrate themselves with the profoundest devotion, and seem wholly absorbed in the communication they are holding with God. There is no wandering of the eye, no turning of the head, as we see in our places of worship, to indicate any abstraction of thought; but there is something sublime in that profound and intense adoration in which I have sometimes seen them fixed. There are in various places beside the highways, square enclosures of stone, called Nasnasgirk, with the ground inside as high as the top of the walls; annexed to them are fountains for ablution, and here daily prayers are offered by passengers. When there are none such, the kebla, or direction of Mecca, is pointed out by a table which every Mussulman carries about him. A small carpet is spread, and the person, turning his face to the Holy City, prostrates himself with his forehead touching the ground, occasionally rising on his knees, and again laying his face to the ground during his prayer. When done, he folds up his carpet, and proceeds on his way. I never went out at the hour of prayer that I did not see men so engaged.—Dr. Walsh's Constantinople.

A BENEFICIAL RULE.

THE following fact is mentioned by Dr. W. C. Taylor as having occurred within his knowledge. A gentleman, who employed several labourers, made it a rule never to pay any sum, however small, without getting a receipt. The shame which those who were unable to write their names felt in setting their marks, though no observation was made on the circumstance, had a perceptible effect in inducing them to seek instruction for their children, and, in more than one instance, for themselves.

MOHAMMEDANIEM AN OBSTACLE TO CIVILIZATION.

But to leave them, and revert to the actual | roots of the faith of Mohammed,—its present legal priesthood-for with the conquests of the prophet, his immediate successors the sultans of Damascus, and the conquerors of Greece, the military inspiration of the creed has dwindled, until it was finally quenched in the blood of those turbulent and profligate soldiers who were the last remnants of that ancient constitution which had strengthened the throne of Constantinople against foreign foes, whilst it made it the plaything of their own fierce caprice.

It is with the priesthood civilization will in future have to deal, through the awaking energies of a nation beginning to feel there may be more for them to learn than has yet been taught them, and there may exist a purer faith than the one which has been the religion of their parents and their childhood.

Essentially a proselyting creed, the spirit of their proselytism has hitherto been that of intolerance as much now evidenced in the persecution of the Syrian Jew as it was when, with greater power, although not greater wish to persecute, the standard of the prophet was thrown to the four winds of heaven, and a sensual paradise was painted to listening thousands by the warrior heads of her priesthood, to be achieved with hands reddened in Christian blood, and reached by spirits reeking with the pollution of the battle; a spirit as strongly evidenced in the impalement of a solitary unbeliever or the fine of a wealthy infidel, as it was in the holocausts offered to the Moloch of religious intolerance when the Crescent was a meteor of evil omen to a third of the then known world.

This spirit is still the same, for the Koran is the only book by which the priesthood must rule the people; nor can it ever become the consistent policy of a government to repress that religion in any shape, which recognizes in its head the linear descendant of a holy dynasty, and which by combining in him at once the priestly and the kingly power, paradoxical as it may appear, becomes the peculiar strength and weakness of his throne.

The disposition to proselytism is in itself the vital spirit of all real religion; but with the Turk it was not that feeling which sends forth the missionary to labour in the vineyard of man, or the philanthropist to cultivate his better impulses, and bring him more nigh that God which the Greek tragedian asserted the soul of man to be.

The proselytism of the Moslem was that of the sword, as the propagandism of the papacy was that of the pile. Both were religions of force; and the struggle of civilization with both is the contest of the spirit with the body. Extending all the great inducements that can please man as panders to his worst passions, the Moslem Moollah holds in his hands the most powerful incentives that can

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His

be brought to bear on the human soul. doctrine of fatalism is but too well adapted to the love of ease and careless torpor of the inhabitant of the East. His senses kindle with the everblooming beauty that is to lull him on the rosestrewn couches of love in his Paphian Eden; whilst his pride and malevolence are roused into action by the denunciations of the Koran against those he has no longer the power, as he once had, to convert or slay.-No religion can combine in one man so much to make man its slave: temporal success, a paradise of lust, an immunity of crime, so a few ablutions be gone through, and a moderate obedience rendered. Nor has the effect of so sensual a creed been lessened by the intellectual power of her priesthood. Bred up to the exercise of their functions in the spirit of intolerance, the moving principle in every political convulsion that has shaken the capital since the extinction of the Janizaries, not a ray of learning is afforded to soften the harshness of their persecuting nature. A knowledge of the Turkish or Arabic letters bounds their acquirements: their prophet's scripture, their whole library. A Frank is but a Yaour, whether of Roman or Lutheran profession. The earth may be round, but the Koran does not say so: and what wonder that such a priesthood set their veto against the civilization that is offered them, and fulminate their sentence of exclusion against every approach to that freedom of will which may be forced upon their notice by the progressive civilization of the slaves that have hitherto humbly yielded to their tyranny.-R.

WHO WOULD BE A SLAVE?

WHO would be a slave? is the exclamation of those who are themselves free, and sometimes of those who, provided they enjoy freedom themselves, care not though the whole world were in bondage. But there is a sentiment still more noble than that. Who would be a slave-dealer, a patron, an advocate of slavery? To be a slave has been the hard but not dishonourable lot of many a good man and noble spirit. But to be a tyrant-that is disgrace! To trample on the rights of his fellow-creature-to treat him, whether it be with cruelty or kindness, as a dog-to hold him in chains when he has perpetrated or threatens no violence-to carry him with a rope round his neck, not to the scaffold, but to the market-to sell him whom God made after his own image, and whom Christ redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, and by the act of transference to tear him from his own bowels-that is disgraceful. I protest before you, that I would a thousand times rather have my brow branded with the name of Slave, than have written in the palm of my hand or sole of my foot, the initial letter of the word Tyrant.-Life of McCrie.

NATIVES OF HONG-KONG.

to describe the state of the patient when she visited the doctor, the manner in which he re

THE natives upon the mainland near the har-ceived her, the nature and details of the operation bour of Hong-kong had the reputation of being she underwent, the tenderness and generosity very friendly to foreigners, not more from motives with which she was nursed, and lastly, the joy of self-interest than from a natural kindness of of herself and friends at meeting, after an event heart, a reputation to which they seemed fully so unexpected and so propitious. entitled, for nothing occurred, during two different visits to this spot, to show that they harboured any disparaging thoughts of us, and were not ready at all times to accompany every act of civility, which common courtesy might enjoin upon them, with all the fair "ostents" of respect.

The man had fully mastered his case, and seemed to be as anxious to state the matter accurately as he was to give to each circumstance the strongest emphasis he could lay upon it. We sat and looked on with interest and instruction; with interest, as we could not fail to be pleased at a recognition so honourable to the foreigner,-and with instruction, because we learned that a benevolent action is not regarded by a Chinese as a whole, but that every accidental, as well as every essential circumstance, is carefully noted, and as faithfully remembered. LAY's Chinese as they are.

MEANS OF IMPROVEMENT.

In certain departments of industry, great advantages result from the constant attempts to attain the highest degrees of excellence. Examine agriculture. No person who understands the luxuries of the table will assert that a sheep rendered enormously fat in rich pasture, or on turnips, is better, or a greater luxury, than one that nas grazed on the aromatic herbage of the Welsh mountains ;-but in the attempt to produce this well-fed animal, which perhaps gains the prize at Smithfield, a number of others have been improved to a less extent, and rendered, in consequence, more adapted to common use. And the high price of well-fed cattle has awakened the feeling of emulation among farmers, in consequence of which the nature of the best breeds of cattle has been

In one of my earlier walks, I was accompanied by some gentlemen belonging to the ships; and among the rest, by a surgeon who had been in the habit of dealing out his advice and medicine gratuitously among the native population. As we sauntered along the beach, our party dispersed itself into two or three groups, one of which was composed of the surgeon and myself. At length we found ourselves near the door of a cottager: here we rested ourselves for a few minutes on a seat outside the door, and begged our host to oblige us with a little water to allay our thirst. While we were exchanging a few words with our new friends, and remarking on their good nature and simplicity to each other, several neighbours came up to join the circle that began to gather around the strangers; among the rest, a man who recognised the surgeon, and being endowed with a share of natural elocution, forthwith introduced him to the company as the skilful and humane benefactor of the suffering Chinese. A short time before this, a woman of some standing and respectability at Cowloon had applied to this gentleman for relief in a dropsical complaint, and, being wisely anxious to insure success, he invited her on board the Hercules, with one or two of her relatives. On board this ship the necessary opera-studied; the manner in which they can be most tion was performed, and the patient nursed in a cabin by herself, amidst the attendance and comforts of the kindest hospitality, till her health was re-established, when she was allowed to return and share in the hearty congratulations of her friends and neighbours. Of this fact, all the parties who composed the little circle which then surrounded us were ignorant save this man, who discovered that their ignorance afforded him an admirable opportunity for displaying his oratorical powers. The recovery of a patient from a wretched and, we may justly add, a dying state, to one of health and cheerfulness, under circumstances so well fitted to engage attention, was an excellent theme, and only required justice to render it most attractive. By way of preparation, the orator laid down a bundle which he carried on his back, and mounted a log of wood which lay at a most convenient distance for the purpose. He then, with a great deal of pantomimic effect, proceeded

efficaciously nourished considered; and from the extension of such inquiries all the principles of farming have been more minutely investigated, and the art of cultivating land improved and adorned with new discoveries. This principle is general: whenever manufactures or any productions of art become articles of general consumption, the higher and more expensive refinements of them are absolutely necessary, not merely for their improvement, but likewise to prevent their decline.

OBSTINACY.

OBSTINACY is a stubbornness of temper, which can assign no reasons but mere will, for a constancy which acts in the nature of dead weight rather than of strength; resembling less the reaction of a powerful spring than the gravitation of a big stone.-Foster.