resumed his instruction. At the close, a man very decently attired approached, and, after crossing himself on the head arms, and breast, and placing his hands together in an attitude of devotion, said that our doctrines were precisely the same as his, and that he was a worshipper of Jeen Choo, the Lord of Heaven.'

The facilities for preaching Christianity appear to be fairly described in the subjoined account of Gutzlaf's practice, even on the mainland, where he is not by law entitled to visit:

Roman Catholic Missionaries, and appeared to be about a hundred and fifty years old. It lay in the midst of a beautiful and quiet retreat, with few houses near. An old man came out of an adjoining dwelling, and conducted us into a dilapidated building, apparently used at present as an old warehouse, or lumber room. It bore the plainest marks of having been a church, with a semicircular arch dividing the body of the building from the chancel, where there was a handsomely-carved altar of stone, about four feet in height and eight in breadth, surmounted by a horizontal slab about a vard in depth. On the outer side was the inscription, "I. H. S.," in large Roman characters, surmounted by a crosss; and the rest of the tablet was decorated with carved representations of dragons, the sacred "On December 22, about nine o'clock, A.M., we ememblem of the Chinese mythology. Near the entrance was barked in a Chinese boat, accompanied by two native an inscription against the wall outside, to the memory of preachers, named A-seaon and A-tai, and proceeded some Christian mandarin. On walking round to the other along the harbour in an easterly direction. The morning side of the building, we beheld six grave-stones inscribed was bright and beautiful, though the cold air made an with the same Roman letters, "I. H. S.," with crosses, and upper coat indispensable to our full comfort. The tower placed on the edge of a large mound, which rose to the ing hills of Hong Kong on our right, and the bold outhse height of twelve feet, and was covered with lilies, plants, of the opposite coast, with native huts and villages on the and some dwarf shrubs, forming a beautiful object in the mainland, and a number of Chinese junks and war garden which surrounds the ruin. Here ample proof ex- vessels sailing about in the opposite bay of Cow-loon, isted, if any were needed, that the Romanists in former gave a pleasing and romantic effect to the scene. We ages, not only had access into the country, but also enjoyed doubled the small headland, which forms the eastern a fair measure of toleration in their missionary work. boundary of the harbour, and soon lost sight of the tow Being desirous of ascertaining the nature and extent of of Victoria. Our plan was to have passed through the missionary facilities in the neighbourhood of Shanghai, Limun Channel, and, steering northward, to have reached I availed myself of the invitation of Mr. Midhurst to ac- a populous village on the mainland, about twenty miles company him in his usual weekly missionary excursion distaut. As the tide had now turned against us, and the up the river. wind was also unfavourable, there remained no probability "About midnight, we embarked in a covered boat, with of our reaching the village till late in the afternoon. We two other missionaries. We set off at this unseasonable accordingly changed our course, and determined on making hour, in order to have as much time as possible before us, the bay, which extends about two miles along the short to bring our trip within the compass of a day's journey, of Hong Kong to the point forming the Limun passage, in accordance with the consular arrangements on the sub- the scene of our day's operations. We therefore disenject of boundaries. We slept on the seats on each side barked, and directed the Chinese in the boat to watch our of our boat, with a few mats below, and a blanket over movements, and to follow us at a little distance from us. The mosquitoes were very troublesome; and we tried the beach. We first landed at a stone quarry, where the in vain to expel these unwelcome intruders by filling the Chinese workmen were induced to leave their labour, and boat with fumes of tobacco, which served only to increase without any difficulty or delay about twenty natives were our previous difficulty in obtaining rest. Towards day- assembled around us, and formed a little congregation of light, as the smarting irritation of their bites subsided, attentive listeners. Mr. Gutzlaff commenced addressing and their numbers gradually disappeared, we got a little them in their own language on the truths of the gospel. sleep, and rose somewhat refreshed to take our morning with much energy, adapting himself in tone, gesture, and meal in the boat, which was now nearly twenty miles up manner, to the assemblage before him. They listened with the river, in a south-west direction from Shanghai. From apparent pleasure, frequently responding and offering obthis point we proceeded very slowly, till at last we pro- servations. He was succeeded in turn by his two native ceeded up a kang, or lesser stream, on our right; and, assistants, who with much animation, especially A-tai, the after another hour's sculling, we stopped at a small hamlet, younger, addressed their fellow-countrymen. The whole the tide leaving our boat without sufficient depth of water was concluded by Mr. Gutzlaff offering a short prayer to to proceed further. We landed amidst about a hundred the Almighty. We then departed, after leaving a few villagers, who quickly gathered around us to receive books, tracts, amid the plaudits and salutations of the assembly. which were distributed to the most intelligent of their most of whom had something to say to us. In this way number. Mr. Medhurst addressed them afterwards for we proceeded over a space of two miles, which was covered about ten minutes; and, finding that they were principally at almost every level and habitable point by native huts of professors of the teen chookeaou, or Roman Catholic, rude construction, but with substantial outer walls to rereligion, dwelt on the more prominent truths of the In- pel the inroads of pirates and freebooters. They seemed carnation and Atonement of Christ, to which they assented. to recognise in Mr. Gutzlaff and his native assistants, old But, on his subsequently enlarging on the necessity of acquaintances; and the authoritative tone and manner in trusting in Christ alone as the Saviour, and the sinful- which he compelled any hesitating or inattentive individual ness of raising other Mediators, such as the Virgin to give his presence and attention was sometimes amusing. Mary, who was only a sinful mortal like ourselves, they At one time we had a congregation in the open air, with appeared to be somewhat staggered, and looked in his the heavens as our canopy, and the rugged soil as the face as if incredulous and distrustful of his remarks. pulpit. At another time we met in some native dwelling, They brought a Popish publication of small size, com- where the tenants of the adjoining huts were congregatedmonly called the Nanking Catechism,' and pointing to Mr. Gutzlaff stationing himself at the door to allow free the characters Peh-to-lo (Peter,) asked if we could give ingress, but to prevent the egress of any refractory them some book about him. We were informed that three individual. His mild compulsions were received with or four European padres were in the habit of visiting the good humour, extracting a smile from the object of neighbouring villages, and that at the distance of a mile from them, and approval from the rest. The majority the next large village which we visited, named Makeaou, were eager to listen, following us, in some instances, there was a church at which worship was performed. to the next place of meeting, where the services underAfter walking two miles over the fields to this village, went a slight change or alteration of the parts as and passing through a long street with shops on either signed to each preacher. Some of the more intelligent side; we entered the temple of the tutelary deity of the listeners made remarks in the course of the address. The place. Here, before the large idol, in the principal hall, dialect they spoke was the Hok-ha, which differs considerMr. Medhurst stood and preached for twenty minutes, to ably from the Canton dialect generally spoken in these about 200 people, who were collected around us, and, parts. While Mr. Gutzlaff, with his usual activity, mounted being unaccustomed to such public instruction, were a hill, which I deemed my strength unequal to the labour rather noisy and boistrous in their remarks. One Chinese of climbing, my attentton was attracted, by the frequent especially hastened to take advantage of the concourse by noise of fireworks and crackers, to a little eminence, to hawking his ware and vending his sweetmeats, beating which some degree of sanctity seemed to be attached. On together two peices of wood to draw attention to his part ascending it, I saw two or three ugly idols, black in ap of the building. Returning to the outer gate, Mr. Med-pearance, and only about six inches in height, with sundry hurst again took his station on a bench, from which he addressed the crowd. When he had delivered about half of his address, a native brought him some tea, which he stopped to drink, amid the applause of the crowd, and then

decorations, and a quantity of gilt paper, representing gar ments in miniature. Before them were little cups filled with tea, and spacious dishes of recently-cooked fowl and ham, with potatoes and yams, and the usual appendages

of a Chinese feast. Two women, and three or four men, were all that visited the place during the time I remained. They left the food exposed without any fear of its being taken away; but this appearance of devoutness generally terminates in their removing the offerings, and having a a feast on them at their own houses."

The work contains a mass of similar details, and is the only manual we know of Chinese missions.

Fisher's Drawing-room Scrap Book. London: Fisher,
Sons, & Co.

No more sweet echoes, floating far and dim
From the full choir and organ-chanted hymn;
Fierce, wrangling oaths the startled air receives,
And lo! God's temple is a den of thieves!

"Take down the sweet Madonna, at whose shrine
The mother knelt to pray for help divine,
When her sick infant, pale and moaning lay,
Wasting its little life in pain away;

While long she knelt and wept, as loth to rise,
With Save him!' written in her suppliant eyes;
And saw the image of her simple faith,
Stand, like a shield, betwixt his soul and Death.
Remove the sculptured Jesus, worn and wan,
The God who suffered all the woes of man!
Pull down the cross that reared so long on high
Its hopeful emblem to the sinner's eye,
Making repentance not à thing in vain,
And Paradise still possible thro' pain;
Banish the Holy Four, whose figures grace,
With decent fitness, God's abiding-place."

We cannot say that this is correct theology; and the poetry
is not sufficiently good to carry objectionable sentiments.
We scarcely expected that any Christian sect taught
so plainly image worship; and we somewhat fear that
the celebrated authoress, having had her share of the
world's excitement, is on the road to a rank and morbid
enthusiasm in favour of image worship at a rather extra-
ordinary pace. We cannot quote all the poetry. That
is unnecessary; but we may copy the last stanzas :-
"Give back the dear remembrancers! Give back
The stars that shone upon the sinner's track!
The signal lights that still 'neath stormy skies
Kept the port visible to ignorant eyes!
Nor fear so much the EMBLEM, LOVE, that gave
Religion what our earthly natures crave;

THE Commercial crisis has frightened publishers, or the years of annuals are past; for we have seen few of the ornate publications that once very regularly chronicled at this season the lapse of time. Until a few days since, we believed them to be all gone together; but the Drawing-room Scrap Book survives. The engravings are necessarily the staple of annuals, and we cannot transfer engravings. The literature is seldom of a high caste, and in this volume it is confined to verses illustrative of the plates. The poets and the poetesses may of course believe that the plates illustrate the text, and we have nothing to plead in bar of that settlement. The volume for 1849 is profusely adorned, as it behoves a Drawing-room Scrap Book to be. A portrait of Victoria, the Princess Royal, forms the vignette title, and, in addition to its being a beautifully-executed engraving, we may add the further recommendation of its being a remarkably-accurate likeness. There are thirty-six engravings in the volume, and amongst them three landscapes-Branbach on the Rhine; Ems on the Lahn, Rhine; and Eaux Bonnes, in the Pyreneesare distinguished by the clear and vivid shading imparted by the engraver. "The Mistaken Hand," a faithless and a fair lady, handing from her casement a letter, intended for a paramour, to a scowling and angry husband, is one of the best imaginative sketches of one class, though scarcely superior, and it should be greatly inferior, to " Hope,'" by H. Robinson, or in another and a yet more difficult class-to "the Earthquake." No effort of the painter's art is more difficult than to bring together extreme sorrow and extreme beauty in one figure. In the earthquake-or in the scene after the this most offensive cant is anything rather than charitable. earthquake—that has been done by the painter and preserved by the engraver. The time delineated is when

the shock has passed-the first excitement is over; and amid the fallen ruins of a Brazilian town, mourners go forth to seek their dead.

Last year the Drawing-room Scrap Book was liberal in its tendencies, and Richard Cobden's portrait was engraved amongst those of the aristocracy. This year it appears to be Puseysite-a day behind the fair, and to be going Romeward when the tide has turned. Is Mrs. Norton, the editress, amongst the Puseyites? The following verses are circumstantial evidence on the subject. We may as well say that the poetry illustrates a wretched engraving of Cromwell's soldiers selling church plunder to a Jew:

"Thro' the arched beauty of the sculptured porch,
Into the calm and consecrated church-
See where they come, with loud, unholy feet,
The soldier ruffians, and the Jewish cheat!
No more soft movement from the tranquil throng,
Who erst to peace and worship passed along ;

The love which bids some burst, or-picture mild-
Replace the absent friend, the buried child;
Gives to a senseless stone a borrowed power,
And makes a relic of a faded flower!
Fear, more than all ye sternly bid depart,
The idol each man bears in his own heart;
Fear, above all, that Puritan idol, PRIDE,
When Form above the God is deified;
And, like the Pharisee, our boastful prayer
Thanks Heaven that we are not as others are!'

6

We understand that the authoress is a decided Liberal -or was. Perhaps, on reflection, she will observe that

Adhesion to "form" never was a Puritanical crime. The objections made to the Puritans were mainly grounded on their contempt of "form." And after all the petty nonsense of sickly versifiers, there will still remain in honest men's hearts a sentiment of respect for the men who, in a cruel age, may have been cruel, but who built up the fabric of English freedom.

The work contains too many cathedrals-sometimes the exterior, and sometimes the interior, but more of both than is needed in a Drawing-room Scrap Book.

The thoughts in sickness at Ems on the Rhine, may
deserve better than the foolish raid on the Puritans.
"Live for THYSELF! let each successive morn

Rouse thee to plans of self-indulgent ease;
And every hour some new caprice be born,
Till all be thrown aside that does not please:
So shalt thou learn how shallow is the fount
Whose glittering waves all wholesome thirst destroy,
And, heart-sick, even in youth, begin to count
Springs without hope, and summers blank of joy!

"Live for thy FELLOW-MEN! let all thy soul

Be given to serve and aid, to cheer and love;

1

moment only, my path upon the mighty deep. Cease, then, | nexion in the East. your infatuated presumption. Lay down the axe and leave me in full possession of my own. Every oak in the forest is mine-mine to eut down, and to carve into the timbers, and the keels of England's busy ships, that fly from port to port, bearing her merchandise to distant lands, and bringing rich treasures back into her bosom. By this constant traffic, her I busy children are maintained. It constitutes alike their industry, their glory, and their power. Without it, they cannot live. Leave me then to my sovereignty over the oak forests wherever they may grow, for all are mine, and I submit to no intermeddling with my rights."

The Drawing-room Scrap Book is a splendid work: the Juvenile Scrap Book is an exquisite little volume, the prettiest we have seen, and, withal, good.

Sketches of Assam. By an Officer. London: Smith, pages, by Mr. Gurney, on the poetical works of this

POLITICAL REGISTER.

Truth in that case would be injurious to credit; and thus, to them, the income tax becomes a tax on credit. In revising this law, a distinction will be drawn between professional income, and that derived from real estate. The latter is permanent, and the former is but temporary. The arrangement by which both were taxed alike is one of Sir Robert Peel's great measures, which, it may be here observed, are all contrived to save trouble. He dislikes the burden of calculations--will look only at the surface—and invariably adopts not the best but the easiest

course.

of Highlandmen employed in the public works of Glasgow have been paid off during the last month, and have returned to their native districts after an absence of years; while scarcely a day passes that does not witness scores of disbanded navies conveyed in the same direction. Last year there was a continual egress of labourers from the starving districts; but this winter the tide has turned, and in all probability will flow till it has carried back into the haunts of distress, both those who fled before the potato failure of last year, and hundreds more who have been gra dually absorbed into the population of the South during the late period of prosperity. In these circumstances it is frivolous to talk of returning the balance in the hands of the Relief Board to the subscribers, or even of applying it to other purposes than the relief of Highland destitution. We rather suspect that this balance, large as it may seem, will have enough to do before the Highlanders are extricated from the slough of difficulty and distress in which the potato disease has involved them; and the only point which truly interests the subscribers to the fund is to have their contributions expended in the way best adapted to combine present relief with permanent improvement. Past abuses in the application of the fund form a very poor argument for entirely abolishing it; but they make a capital argument for turning it to better account for the future. The Central Board ought to shake There is a ray of hope in the fact of our having not itself clear of eleemosynary relief. Leaving to the ordinary merely a new Parliament, but one largely composed of poor law the duty of dispensing charity, it will find in the new men, many of whom have a greater talent for actual employment of the able-bodied in useful and reprohard-business-doing than for conversation on such sub-ductive works its safest and most beneficent sphere of jects, and who may not understand that sanatory measures are habitually promised as a matter of form.

Sanatory measures are proposed; and we regard the promise now as very nearly resembling the fulfilment of a common custom with statesmen, which will soon become venerable, like any other graceful and easy practice descended from our ancestors. Sanatory measures have been promised regularly, for a number of past years. They will be premised as regularly, we suppose, for a number of years to We see nothing to prevent that course. It is easy always to appoint a new commission for the purpose of conserving mud and bad drains. This opinion seems also to be entertained by the local authorities of several large towns, who, when they become earnest on the subject, at once apply for local and special bills. They have no prospect that the Government measure can be rendered available for the present generation.

come.

THE condition of the Highlands is likely to prove a source of anxiety for a long time to come. In many districts distress this winter will be scarcely less acute than it was last year. The loss of the potato has completely changed the circumstances of the population. The petty crofts, on which the people mainly depend for subsistence, yielded potatoes sufficient to sustain a family during the greater part of the year. The food was certainly not substantial; but it stifled the gnawings of hunger and preserved existence. But the same patches of land, when laid out in corn crops, as they have universally been this season, produce only a few bolls of oat or barley meal, which will scarcely carry the people over Christmas. The deficiency might be made up by employment, if that were abundant; but the absenteeism of some proprietors, the incumbrances of others, and the stagnation produced by the sheep walks, have narrowed the demand for labour far within the wants of the population. The present commercial pressure, morcover, aggravates deeply the calamities of the Highlands. Considerable numbers

action. The great desideratum is to increase the supply of food. This may be done by an improved cultivation of the crofts, and by the bringing in of new land, with which the crofts may be enlarged. Here, then, is a fiel in which the Relief Board, in friendly co-operation with the proprietors, may employ its funds with immedia and lasting advantage both to the Highlands and the country in general. But the Government has also its duties to perform. The attention of the new Parliament has been eagerly and impatiently called to the sufferings, the disorders, and the requirements of Ireland. We wish we could get our English neighbours to understand and to remember that there is a little Ireland in the islands, and along the west coast of the mainland of Scotland, which, though quieter and less addicted to blood-spilling than Ireland proper, is equally needful of legislative regards. There is scarcely a social malady ia the one that has not its counterpart in the other. A Landlord and Tenants Bill, a Waste Lands Bill, a Sale of Encumbered Estates Bill, and all the other land bills now or ever promised to Ireland, may, with the utmost propriety, and from equal necessity, be extended to the Highlands of Scotland.