"Great mountain," a very holy and "powerful" hill in Schan-tung, to which Confucius has alluded, and to which pilgrimages are made. At the bows there was the cheering assurance, "The ship's head prospers," which in our passage was not falsified.

These evidences of high moral feeling, however, were hardly borne out by the conduct of the crew. As 'Punch's' footman observed of the leg-of-mutton dinner, they were "substantial, but coarse;" quite without the politeness of the peasantry; friendly enough, but indulging in rough play, such as giving each other, and some of the passengers, sundry violent pats on the head. The captain, as is everywhere usual at sea, gave his orders roughly, and required them to be promptly obeyed. They don't think much of firing into another boat, by way of amusement or gentle warning; and are not altogether averse to a quiet little piece of piracy when it comes in their way. On leaving the Canton river the wind and tide in the Kup-shui-moon pass or strait were so strong that we ran in-shore, anchored, and spent the night there. Most of the crew and some of the passengers sat up most of the night gambling, which surely did not look as if their virtue was quite the size of a mountain, and indulged in some violent disputes. Their playing cards were more elaborate than ours, having many characters and devices upon them, but not a fourth of the size. Being scarcely half an inch broad, though about the same length as ours, and with more distinctive marks, they were held and handled with much greater ease. Instead of being dealt out, they were laid down

on their faces between the players, and each man helped himself in order.

The Kup-shui-moon is a great place for pirates, and as I was courting sleep some of the passengers were discussing the probability of our being taken by them, and hung up by the thumbs and great toes to make us send for an outrageous ransom. They did not use Hai traák, the Chinese word for "sea-robbers," but Pi-long, which. is a Chinesified form of the English word "pirate," and La-li-loong, which is doubtless their form of the Portuguese word ladrone. Like the Italians with their bifstecca for our abrupt "beefsteak," the Chinese, when they adopt or use European words, throw them into an extended mellifluous form, in which it is difficult to recognise the original sound. La-li-loong is a good illustration of this, and so also is pe-lan-dia, by which they mean

brandy." The estuary of the Pearl river and the neighbouring coast have long been famous for pirates, and the passengers were not without some cause of apprehension. I have seen these professional pirate junks watching in the Kup-shuimoon at one time, and only a few mails ago there came out accounts of an attempt to take an English steamer in or close to it. Not less than their names, Pi-long and La

-loong, the pirates of China are a result of foreign contact, and as yet give no signs of diminishing either in numbers or in power.

However, no sea-robbers disturbed our repose. Next morning I found we had passed the strait, and were drawing under the shadow of Victoria Peak.

THE British nation has just had one of its grand spontaneous holidays-a holiday so universal and unanimous that imagination is at a loss where to find that surprised and admiring spectator whose supposed presence heightens ordinary festivities by giving the revellers a welcome opportunity of explaining what it is all about. There is not a peasant nor a babe within the three kingdoms which has not had his or its share in the universal celebration, and is not as well aware as we are what the reason is, or why every sleeper in England was roused on this chill Tuesday morning by the clangour of joy-bells and irregular (alas! often thrice irregular) dropping of the intermittent feude-joie, with which every band of Volunteers in every village, not to speak of great guns and formal salutes, has vindicated its British rights-every man for himself to honour the day. We are known as a silent nation in most circumstances, and a nation grave, sober-minded, not enthusiastic; yet, barring mountains and moors, there is not a square mile of British soil in any of the three kingdoms in which the ringing of joyful bells, the cheers of joyful voices, have not been the predominating sound from earliest dawn of this March morning. Labour has suspended every exertion but that emulation of who shall shout the loudest and rejoice the most heartily. If there was any compulsion in the holiday, it was a pressure used by the people upon a Government which has other things to do than invent or embellish festivals. We have insisted upon our day's pleasuring. We have borne all the necessary expenses, and taken all the inevitable trouble. Is it sympathy, loyalty, national pride or what is it? It is something embracing all, yet more simple, more comprehensive, more spontaneous than either it is

a real personal joy which we have been celebrating the first great personal event in the young life which belongs to us, and which we delight to honour. The Son of England receives his bride in the sight of no limited company, however distinguished, but of the entire nation, which rejoices with him and over him without a dissentient or discontented voice. Our sentiments towards him are of no secondary description. It is our wedding, and this great nation is his father's house.

His father's house-not now is the time to enlarge upon these words, nor the suggestions of most tender sadness, the subduing Lenten shadow upon the general joy which they convey, and which is in everybody's mind. It is the house of his Mother whom her people have come to serve, not with ordinary tributes of loyalty, but with intuitions of love. England has learned to know, not what custom exacts or duty requires towards her Royal Mistress, but, with a certain tender devotion which perhaps a nation can bear only to a woman, to follow the thoughts, the wishes, the inclinations of HER QUEEN. Something has come to pass of which constitutional monarchy, popular freedom, just laws, offer no sufficient explanation. The country is at one with the Sovereign. A union so perfect has come about by degrees, as was natural; and the heart of the race which expanded to her in natural sympathy, when, young and inexperienced, she ascended the throne, has quickened gradually into a warmer universal sentiment than perhaps has ever been felt for a monarch. We use the ancient hyperboles of loyalty with calmness in this island, knowing that they rather fall short of the fact than exceed it. It is barely truth to say that any trouble or distress of Hers affects her humble

subjects in a degree only less acute than their own personal afflictions; and that never neighbour was wept over with a truer heart in the day of her calamity than was the Queen in hers by every soul of her subjects, great and small. Intense sorrow cannot dwell long in the universal bosom; but the country, not contented with rendering its fullest tribute of grief for the lost, has dedicated many an occasional outbreak of tears through all these months to that unaccustomed cloud which veiled the royal house. And now it is spring, and the purest abstract type of joy-young love and marriage comes with strange yet sweet significance in Lent, to open, as we all hope, a new chapter in that household history in which we are so much concerned. With all the natural force of revulsion out of mourning, with all the natural sympathy for that visible representation of happiness in which men and women can never refuse to be interested, there has mingled, above all, a wistful national longing "to please the Queen." Curiosity and interest were doubtless strongly excited by the coming of the bride -but not for the fair Danish Princess alone would London have built itself anew in walls of human faces, and an entire community expended a day of its most valuable time for one momentary glimpse of the sweet girlish countenance on which life as yet has had time to write nothing but hope and beauty. The sentiment of that wonderful reception was but a subtle echo of our Lady's wish, lovingly carried out by the nation, which is her Knight as well as Subject. To hide our dingy London houses, we could not resort to the effective tricks with which skilful French hands can make impromptu marble and gold: but we did what art and genius could never attempt to do what nothing but love could accomplish; we draped and festooned and clustered over every shabby line of architecture with a living illumination of English faces, all glowing and eager

not only to see the new-comer, but to show the new-comer, what no words could ever tell her, that she came welcome as a daughter to that heart of England in which, without any doubt or controversy, the Mother-Monarch held a place more absolute than could be conquered by might or won by fame. Let us not attempt to read moral lessons to the princely lovers, who, it is to be hoped, were thinking of something else than moralities in that moment of their meeting, and were for the time inaccessible to instruction; but without any moral meaning, the sentiment which swayed the enthusiastic multitude on the day of the Princess Alexandra's arrival was more like that of a vast household, acting upon the personal wish of its head, than a national demonstration coldly planned by official hands. The Queen, who sat at her palace window in the softfalling twilight, looking out like any tender mother for the coming of her son and his bride, till the darkness hid her from the spectators outside, gave the last climax of

truth and tenderness to that welcome, which was no affair of ceremony, but a genuine universal utterance of the unanimous heart.

Loyalty seems an inherent quality in our race; but it has been a loyalty of sections up to the present time, whenever it has been at all fervent or passionate. It has been reserved for Queen Victoria to make of it a sentiment as warm as in days of tumult, as broad as in times of peace. So thoroughly has she conquered the heart of the nation, that it seems about time to give up explaining why. To those who have been born under her rule, and even to her own contemporaries, a pure Court and a spotless royal life appear no exceptional glories, but the natural and blessed order of things; and we love her, not consciously because of her goodness, but only for love's own royal reason, because we love her. Nothing can happen of any moment in those royal rooms where

so very small a number of her people can ever dream of entering as guests, without moving the entire mass of her people with a sentiment only second, as we have already said, to immediate personal joy or grief. It is this alone that can explain the extraordinary rejoicings of this day. We keep the feast not by sympathy in another's joy, but by positive appropriation of a joy which is our own. The wedding has, in fact, been celebrated in the presence of all Eng land, with unanimous consent and acclamation of the same. With blessings and tears, with immeasurable good wishes, hopes, and joyful auguries, we have waited at the princely gates to send the Bride and Bridegroom upon their way. Speak it in audible words, oh Princes and Poets! Echo it in mighty tones of power, oh awful cannons and voices of war, which deal no death in England, sound it forth over all the world and space in inarticulate murmurous thunders, oh unanimous People! Let the Mother smile among her tears to hear how every faithful soul of her true subjects honours her children; and then let there be silence in the midst of all-silence one moment, and no more, for the missing Voice which would have made the joy too perfect

"Nor count me all to blame, if I

Conjecture of a stiller guest, Perchance, perchance among the rest, And though in silence wishing joy."

And now the thing we wish for most to complete our rejoicing is, if we could but have some spectator worthy the sight, to see all our great towns blazing up to heaven, and every village glimmering over "beneath its little lot of stars," with all the lights it can gather. A group of sympathetic angels fanning the solemn airs of night with grand expanded wing and flowing garments, watching the great and strange marvel of a nation wild with joy, would be pleasant to think of at this moment. Perhaps to such

watchers, lingering on cloudy mountain heights above us, the hamlets shining like so many glow-worms all over the dewy darkling country would be the sweetest sight. London, glowing in a lurid blaze into the night, doing all that is in her to give splendour to the darkness; Edinburgh, more gloriously resplendent, with valleys and hills of fire, improvising a drama of illumination with lyric responses and choral outbursts of sweet light, the emblem of joy, are but the centres of the scene. Here, too, past our village windows, comes the blaze of torches, held high in unseen hands, moving in a picturesque uncertain line between the silent bewildered trees: though nobody wits of us, hidden in the night, that is no reason why we should stifle the joy in our hearts on this night of the wedding. Windsor itself did not begin to thrill with bells earlier than we; and even Edinburgh will have commenced to fade slowly out of the enchanted air into the common slumber ere we have exhausted all those devious rockets which startle the darkness and the dews. Nor we only, but every congregation of cottages, every cluster of humble roofs, wherever a church-spire penetrates the air, wherever there is window to light or bell to ring. Bear us witness, dear wondering angels! Far off by the silent inland rivers, deep under the shadows of the hills, perched upon rocky points and coves by the sea, lying low upon the dewy plains, is there a village over all the island that has not lighted a joyous blaze for love of its Queen, and in honour of the Bride? Health, joy, prosperity, and increase to our Prince and Princess! If they can ever be happier than at this sweet moment, crowned by Love and Youth with that joy which human imagination has everywhere concluded the height of human blessedness, let the heavens advance them speedily to yet a sweeter glory. If there were any better bliss we could win for them or purchase for them, the

world well knows we would spare no pains; but as it is, all that loyal hearts can do is to wish, with hearty love and acclaim, every joy short of heaven to the young heirs of all our hopes; but not that for many a happy year.

And now the holiday is over, and the stars begin to show softly over the waning lights and voices fatigued with joy. Is there, perhaps, a Watcher in the royal chambers who weeps in the night when all is over, and God alone sees Her solitude-Our Queen! There is not a woman in England but thinks of you-not a man but would purchase comfort for your heart by any deed that man could do. Since the mar

riage-feast was spread for you, Liege Lady and Sovereign, what have not Life and Time done for all of us

what happiness, what anguish, what births and deaths! Now is it over, the joy of life?—but still remain tender love and honour, dear duty and labour, God and the children, the heirs of a new life. Oh, tranquil heavens! stoop softly over the widowed and the wedded-over us who have had, and they who have, the perfection and the joy! Enough for all of us, that over all is the Common Father, whose love can accomplish nothing which is not Well.

10th March 1863.