Further inspection was interrupted by a bustle outside the hall and the entrance of all the relatives and friends come to witness the ceremony. Soon afterwards the word "coming was spoken by some one, whereupon a young friend of the bridegroom, chosen as "the receiver of guests," put on a long, light-coloured silk garment over his usual dress. The exclamation "Coming!" was twice repeated, upon which he put on other two garments, one of figured light-green silk, and the other a dark purple robe of figured satin, having in his hand a pyramidal cap, with red silk at the apex. The father now asked if all was ready; he was answered in the affirmative. Then his son entered the hall, and "the receiver of guests" conducted him to his seat at the head of the table.

The sound of music was now heard outside, together with the banging of gongs, and the noise culminated in a shower of fire-crackers that fairly deafened our

ears.

When these noises ceased, the procession entered the court-yard. It consisted of persons holding scarlet canopies over the heads of relatives of the bride, and others carrying chests, carved and painted in red, edged with gold, containing the bride's wardrobe. In the midst of the procession came her chair, a very gorgeous sedan, hired for such occasions, elaborately carved and gilded, with the red satin curtains drawn so that no one could see her. When the four chairbearers arrived at the outer gate, they set down the chair, and opened it to let her out. She was dressed in a scarlet robe of satin, richly embroidered, and wore a thick scarlet veil of silk crape, so that literally she could not see, or her features be seen. Her dress was an elaborate toilet of blue and gold flowers. Two old women stood at the door of the chair and took her out, while she remained perfectly passive in their hands. They then carried her into the hall, where they set her down before the altar and tablet of her future husband's ancestors.

while the priest pronounced a benediction on the married couple.

These forms concluded the ceremony. The bride was then carried out into her own apartment by the two old women, and the bridegroom was conveyed bodily, head foremost, into his apartment by his young men. He underwent some chaffing for a little, and then went alone to his bride, where he drew off the veil, and for the first time beheld her face. "What think you of the ceremony?" asked Mengkee.

"Well, I have been very much interested in witnessing it. Though I am not expected to understand the nature of the forms gone through, yet it is sufficiently obvious that they are full of meaning-the last one especially, where the two ribbons are tied as an emblem of their being united. I must say also that, with the exception of the bridegroom being carried out so unceremoniously by his friends, the whole ceremony has been conducted with decorum, and some degree of solemnity."

"Yes, you are right; it is a rude, but an old custom, and therefore it is tolerated. But that is mild to what I have seen at some marriages, where the bridegroom is brought into the hall on the shoulders of his friends, who set up a great shouting and laughter, and tumble him down beside his bride, struggling like a prisoner to get free. But here our young host comes to entertain us for the evening."

By this time darkness had set in, and the hall was beautifully lighted up with lanterns of the most variegated forms and colours, giving quite a brilliant aspect to the scene. Then the relatives and guests head-seated themselves at the tables, while servants flitted in and out with savoury dishes, of which they partook heartily, each one chatting to his neighbour and discussing the ceremony of the day.

Meanwhile the bridegroom had left the hall, but in a few minutes returned with his young male friends and the Buddhist priest appointed to perform the rites of marriage. These friends almost carried him in bodily, and set him down beside his bride before the ancestral tablet, each clasping their hands, and reverentially bowing their heads. Then the priest began to intone, the service, in the midst of which, at a given signal, the two old women joined hands and knelt before the tablet. Then they tied a piece of red silk ribbon to the girdle of the bridegroom, and a piece of green silk ribbon to that of the bride. The priest muttered again, and they all joined in; after which the two women tied the ribbons together, and thus they were united for life in the bonds of matrimony.

This done, they all rose from their prostrate position, and the united couple were seated together before the table where the collation was spread. Here the two old women poured out two cupfuls of wine, which they held to the lips of both; they then changed the cups, poured the wine out of one cup into the other, thus mixing the wine together, and again presenting them to their lips. In like manner two dishes of rice were intermingled, and partaken of by the bride and bridegroom. Having thus seen them go through the ceremony of eating together, the old women retired, but immediately returned with a pail and a broom, which they placed at the side of the wife, to indicate her household duties;

I was introduced by Meng-kee to the bridegroom, who was a young man of about four-and-twenty, having a remarkably intelligent countenance. He thanked me for the honour of my presence in very polite terms. Then he rose, carrying in his hand a beautiful porcelain jar filled with sweet rose-coloured wine, and walking round the tables, poured some into each guest's cup. The master of the ceremonies, or "receiver of guests,' now intimated that the bridegroom wished to express his obligations to his friends who had honoured him with their presence on the occasion.

The bridegroom then invited me into the ladies' apartment, where a large assemblage of the bride and bridegroom's female friends were partaking of supper, among whom was A-Lee, who looked the belle of the party. The newly-made wife sat at the top of the table, and rose on their entrance, rubbing her breast up and down with her right hand to express her delight on the occasion. One of her attendants then called out-"Worthy matrons and young ladies, the bride desires to offer her respectful thanks to you all for your kindness and attention."

We then returned to the gentlemen's supper-room, followed by the bride and her attendants, where one of them acknowledged the honour they had conferred upon her by their presence at the wedding. After this she retired to the bridal chamber. Here, I thought, she would now be screened from the gaze of her visitors. Not so. On the contrary, it was only now, apparently, that they were to have a good look at her to make up for her past and future seclu sion. To any special visitor who entered, the bride

was brought out for inspection, and at the interview | belong to educational employments. In the Civil Serhe or she was allowed to offer any remarks they chose about her lips, nose, eyes, brows, feet, or any part of her dress. The composure of the young bride through it all was amazing-not a smile on her lips, not a blush on her face; the muscles seemed immovable. This demeanour, I was told, added to the reputation of the bride for her gravity, calmness, and temper in not being fluttered by the remarks, good or bad, from favourable or unfavourable criti

very large, and amounting to sixteen thousand, or one-third of the whole. When we come to cotton and flax, Lancashire shows us more than three hundred thousand of its daughters in the various branches of its noble industry, but with a number of

The great body of servants belong to that allembracing class "general," and form considerably more than half of the total number, nearly eight hundred thousand. There are a hundred and forty thousand housekeepers, ninety-three thousand cooks, upwards of a hundred thousand housemaids, seventy-child-workers which is greatly to be regretted, more five thousand nurses, and four thousand laundrymaids. Nurses, not domestic servants, number twenty-eight thousand four hundred and seventeen, including the hospital nurse, and perhaps, in some cases, that dreaded individual, the "monthly nurse,' for whom the only correlative supplied by nature is the equally proverbial mother-in-law. Many more of these estimable Mrs. Gamps are doubtless returned under the head of midwives. There are, too, nearly seventy-eight thousand charwomen, a significant proof of the enormous number of families where either no servant is kept, or where the domestic service is insufficient for the household wants.

The commercial class opens with a proof of the existence among ladies of the money-making capacities which are usually associated with the mart and the exchange, but which are here shown to have their representation in the boudoir and the drawing-room, for we have more than three thousand lady capitalists and shareholders, seventeen hundred saleswomen, and fourteen hundred commercial clerks. The shopwomen of undefined trades number seventeen thousand, and there are the same number of hawkers and pedlars.

Passing on to the agricultural class, we find nearly a hundred thousand farmers' daughters, granddaughters, sisters, and nieces, the wives having already been accounted for in the domestic class. In addition to these-and they are, it must be remembered, practically farm-servants-there are thirtythree thousand females employed in the fields, more than a hundred of whom are under ten years of age, two thousand between ten and fifteen, and four thousand between fifteen and twenty. This reveals an employment of juvenile labour, and still worse of female labour, in the most arduous work, which is one of the least satisfactory results opened out in these pages, and certainly goes far to strengthen Mr. Arch and his fellow-advocates of increased wages, as, if the men were better paid, it may be fairly hoped that there would be less need for girls to undertake such work. There are more than two thousand women who are gardeners by profession.

In the great industrial class, as might be expected, women and girls find numberless means of gaining a livelihood. In bookbinding more than three thousand girls under twenty are engaged; artificial flower-making employs five thousand hands, while even in the making of firearms female labour is utilised, especially in the manufacture of percussion caps and cartridges. The match girls who marched in procession along the Thames embankment to touch the heart of Mr. Lowe when he threatened to tax their humble industry, only number about six hundred, more than half of whom are under twenty years of age. But it is in the great manufactures of textile and woollen fabrics that women find, as they always have found, their chief employment. In the various forms of woollen and worsted manufactures upwards of a hundred thousand hands are engaged, no less than twenty thousand being under fifteen years of age. In silk, satin, and ribbon work the numbers stand between fifty and sixty thousand, the proportion of female operatives under fifteen being here also

than three hundred thousand being returned under ten years of age, and fifty thousand between ten and fifteen. Whether the work tells on the health of the women, or whether they become wives and mothers, the tables show not, but there is an enormous decrease when we reach thirty-five, amounting to more than one-half of the number employed in the preceding decennial period.

In millinery and dress-making, the energies of three hundred thousand women are employed, five thousand of whom are under fifteen, and sixty thousand between fifteen and twenty-a fact which should not be without significance to those who, by mere thoughtlessness, aid in the blighting of many thousands of these young lives, and perhaps in sowing the seeds of premature decay, by giving orders at the last moment which involve many hours of nightwork to execute. And then, again, we have the subjects of Tom Hood's "Song of the Shirt," the victims of the keeper of the ready-made clothes shop, upwards of eighty thousand shirtmakers and seamstresses, some being here included who are literally, as the tables show, compelled to work on until the needle falls from their hands. The female hatters, it is noticeable, have very largely increased on the numbers of the previous report, being nearly three times as numerous as in 1861, a fact probably explained by the greater popularity of the hat as an article of lady's headgear, and also by the transformation of bonnets into hats which has been gradually going forward until it requires a good eye to detect the difference.

Turning to the various employments connected with the food supply of the people, the number of women is more limited, except in some few instances, such as the grocers and teadealers, where we find upwards of twenty-two thousand; while of bakers, greengrocers, confectioners, and tobacconists, the number of women and girls varies from four to six thousand in each trade.

In the list of persons "working and dealing in minerals," the chief source of female employment is in the manufacture of earthenware, in which sixteen thousand are engaged, nearly half of whom are under twenty years of age. Their light and quick fingers find ample exercise in many branches of this useful industry, and there is perhaps no pleasanter sight in the world of work than one of the long rooms at Worcester, at Torquay, or in the Potteries, where young women, and even young girls, are thus busily engaged in a duty which is often very far from being merely mechanical, as it opens out opportunities for the development of the higher inventive faculties. Far more satisfactory is it, for instance, to see women thus employed, than to think of the heavy and uncon genial toil represented by the return of three thousand coal labourers, of whom more than a third are mere girls, and of nearly the same number of brickmakers, who we are sorry to find are also for the most part very young.

In the numerous metal manufactures again, and especially in the great establishments where plate goods are turned out with an amount of artistic finish which attracts the eye even of the lover of the more ancient work, women are largely engaged; and it

may interest carpenters, old and young, to learn that their nails are frequently made by women, the number of females thus employed being almost equal to that of the men and boys. When we arrive at the last class the indefinite and non-productive-we find upwards of twenty thousand hands set down as machine workers, and about the same number of factory and shop women whose branch of labour is not specified; and thus we see by actual analysis that the statement with which we opened this paper is literally correct, and that the women of England have not "idle hands," but are, in the best sense of the words, "busy-bodies."

however, also to be shown, for in eighty thousand of these million couples the wives were ten years older than the husbands, four thousand were twenty years older, three hundred were thirty years older, fortytwo were forty years older, and-will it be believed? four of these husbands, ranging in age from thirty to forty, were living with wives aged from eighty to ninety, or, as people commonly say, with women old enough to be their mothers. In connection with this part of the subject, we are able, with the aid of the Registrar-General's returns of births, deaths, and marriages, to estimate the number of children born on an average to wives of certain ages, and taking But before we leave this part of our subject there the age from twenty to forty as being the normal are some other facts respecting the women of Eng-child-bearing period, we find that, to every hundred land which can scarcely fail to interest them-and, wives, about thirty-six children were born annually indeed, the general reader too-we refer to what we from 1861 to 1870; in other words, each wife may term the matrimonial statistics, which, making between twenty and forty has on an average one due allowance for the difficulties of obtaining trust- child every three years. worthy information, are sufficiently full to form the basis of several important deductions. In the first place, the tables tell in an unmistakable way of the marrying tendencies of the nation, for out of the total population of twenty-two and a-half millions, nine millions had entered the married state; and of the remainder, eight millions were under fifteen years of age, thus leaving only five and a-half millions of spinsters and bachelors who were open to offers," to use a colloquial term; or, if we consider the fit age for marriage to be twenty and upwards, the number of unmarried people who might, if all things had been equal, have entered into wedlock is reduced to three and a-half millions. This is by no means an unreasonable proportion of such an enormous mass, without ascribing to the people any unwholesome taste for celibacy. Of those actually married we have more than three and a-half millions of husbands, and about the same number of wives, the majority of whom were residing together at the time of the Census. In 211,352 cases the wives were returned as absent, or, in other words, were not in the same houses as their husbands; and, turning the tables, 276,516 husbands were not returned as in the same houses as their wives.

This result was of course largely due to the accidental causes which are always in operation-such as sickness, death, and other family events which in every-day life involve the absence of the father or mother, as well as to the involuntary absence of men owing to their business in travelling, and of women -especially of the poorer classes-employed as midwives, nurses, and in other ways.

The women of Great Britain, as a rule, marry at a far earlier ago than common experience would lead one to imagine, there being no less than thirty-four thousand wives under twenty, and some-the authorities, for some reason best known to themselves, do not say how many-who are under fifteen are included in this column. The husbands take a different view, for we find only six thousand married men under twenty, or about one-sixth of the number of wives in the same period of age. But perhaps the most remarkable feature in these matrimonial statistics is the extraordinary disparity of agos between husband and wives. Thus, out of a million husbands, whose ages at the Census-taking varied from thirty to forty, six hundred and seventy thousand of their wives belonged to the same age-period, but two hundred and seventy thousand were ten years younger, and fifteen hundred were under twenty. The reverse of the picture is,

Looking back again from the children to the parents, a few more facts may be culled from the reports as to the marrying ages of the people. The men under twenty-shall we call them boys ?-show, as we have said, such a marked disinclination to marriage, or rather a prudent delay till in fit position to marry, that the number of those married at this age is so small as to be scarcely worthy of consideration. The moral dissuasives of Malthus and his followers are not so much needed as formerly. At the same time, in large towns especially, there is much to deplore on this subject, though not included in "Marriage Statistics." Of every hundred men between twenty and twenty-five, seventy-seven are bachelors, thirty-nine per cent. are unmarried between twenty-five and thirty, twenty-three continue single during the next decade, twelve per cent. refuse to marry between forty and forty-five, but from this age the percentage of bachelors gradually declines. According to other calculations, founded on the returns from the marriage registers of the period of the Census 1861-71, it appears that eight in every ten of the brides and bridegrooms at their first marriage are between twenty and thirty years of age, the mean age being twenty-five. It is further ascertained that the probable duration of the married life of such persons is twenty-seven years, an argument this without any indulgence of sentiment in favour of early marriages, as it enables parents to look forward with some hope of certainty to seeing their children settled and, perhaps, in their turn also, married.

The marriage of widows and widowers is clearly shown to be a very common practice, as it is calculated that out of the married couples at the Censustaking, upwards of a hundred and twenty thousand were widowers married to widows, nearly three hundred thousand widowers married to spinsters, and a hundred and fifty thousand widows married to bachelors. The "pretty young widow," who so often excites the envy of the marriageable young ladies in our little rural and suburban coteries, is therefore proved to be a really formidable rival to the veritable spinster. Of every hundred men above twenty years of age, twenty-seven are bachelors, sixty-six are husbands, and seven are widowers; while of every hundred women of a corresponding period of age, twenty-six are spinsters, sixty-one are wives, and thirteen are widows. Of the widows three hundred were under twenty, and five thousand between twenty and twenty-five, while at these two periods there were eighty-seven widowers in the first,

and two thousand five hundred in the second. "Old men's darlings," as young wives allied to antique gentlemen are often termed, appear to be tolerably numerous, for we find, out of every hundred husbands, eight men of sixty, four of sixty-five, and three of seventy with wives under twenty, while an equal disparity of age is frequently noticeable in the higher periods of life. The general result of these notes is, we think, fairly satisfactory, as indicating the prosperity of the nation; and early marriages in the general average, however censurable in special cases, are an unquestionable proof in this direction.

minutives. To almost every noun at Rarotonga and Mangaia DIMINUTIVES.-Polynesians are addicted to the use of dior "manga ""bit of;" a ship" thus becomes "a bit of a ship;" "a man " is spoken of as a bit of a man," etc., etc. In presenting a basket of taro, the owner will depreciate it by calling it "a few buds or offshoots; a bunch of bananas becomes a sprout;" a great feast dwindles to "something wrapped up in leaves." In giving out the needful directions for a feasting, a chief will sometimes tell his people "to look out for wild 'nono' apples," intending by this delicate hint that their finest taro should be through everything. A plantation is described as "a holeful taken up on the day specified. This style of expression runs of earth," or "a leaf-ful of soil," or "standing-room for a bread-fruit tree." A widow once told me that her deceased husband "had left her beneath the post of their dwelling." meaning that he had given her their house to live in, not the food in the interior of the island. A man with an armful secured a shark will describe it as "a minnow." A comfortable of cloth will confess to "a patch." A fisherman who has dwelling-house becomes a mere