Duce happy moments did that now bring to her broken heart! She even sought an opportunity of destroying herself forthwith; but upon reflection, said, "I, Keaou Lwan, am the beloved daughter of a family of note: I was not without beauty, and the world said that I possessed some little talent; were I thus silently and obscurely to pass into oblivion, would I not thereby be conferring a great favor on my heartless lover?” With that she drew up thirty-two stanzas of poetry, intimating that she was about to take away her own life, and an ode or ballad of eternal resentment directed against Ting Chang. The following is a verse of the poetry alluded to:— "As I lean against my door-post, and in grief and silence meditate on bygone scenes, I sigh; alas! my dream of wedded life has now vanished like a smile. Love, in early life, stirred up the rambling fibres of passion, and dragged the green and tender buds of my heart astray. Rage now follows like a torrent, and shrinks these green buds to the withered rod of resentment. Then I said, my lord will return true to his promise, as spring to her revolving period. But now, alas! full well I know that all is vanity.' I turn my head, and lean against the railing-the painful spot of our long farewell And all my sorrows for ten thousand years I lay at the door of the false and cruel east wind."* The remainder of the poetry is not recorded, but her ode of resentment was to the following effect: "This ode of hatred eternal, upon whose account do I now make it? Ah! when I bethink me of its commencement, my heart is truly sad! In the morning I meditate upon it, in the evening I revolve it in my mind; the painful thought never leaves me; So I again take up this marriage paper, to declare the heartlessness of thy love.' Here follows a long poem, full of simple imagery, which want of space obliges us to omit, and we hasten to the termination of our melancholy tale. Keaou Lwan's letters and poetry being now fairly written out, she wished again to despatch Sinkew with them, but the soldier knit his brows, ground his teeth, and would on no account consent to go. There was, then, no way of getting her letters sent to Ting Chang, when it so happened that, just at that very time, her father fell sick of the phlegm, and called Keaou Lwan to look over and arrange some public documents for him. In looking over these papers, she found one relating * Among the Chinese, the east wind is the emblem of the faithless lover. to a soldier, a native of Woo Keang district, who had deserted from that quarter, and had joined her father's military station at Nanyang. Lwan's heart immediately conceived the following project. She took all their former love correspondence, along with the newly-composed poetry relating to taking away of her own life, and her ballad of eternal resentment-these she classed in order, so as to form a little volume; then taking the two copies of their marriage contract, she placed them within the cover; afterwards she made a parcel of the whole, which she put up in the form of a mandarin's public document: this she sealed, and wrote upon the envelope-" Captain Wang, who holds the seal of office of the military station of Nanyang, to the chief magistrate of Woo Keang, in the imperial district of Soochow, to be opened when seated in his public hall-these." This done, she despatched an accredited messenger with the same; and her father, Mr. Wang, knew nothing whatever about the matter. That very night Keaou Lwan washed her person with the utmost care, and having changed her clothes, she desired Minghea to go and make her some tea, using this deceit to get Minghea out of the room. No sooner was her maid gone, than having first fastened the door, she made use of a stool to support her feet; then taking a white sash, she threw it over a beam, and tied it; next, having made fast the scented gauze napkin, the first cause of all her woes, round her throat, she joined it to the white sash in a dead knot, and finally kicking away the stool, her feet swung in mid air, and in a moment her spirit dissolved in ether, while her soul sought the habitations of the dead, at the early age of twenty-one years! "A little scented gauze handkerchief commenced and ended her tragic history!" Minghea then, having boiled the tea, was bringing it to her mistress, when she found the door fast shut. She knocked for some time, but no one opening, she ran in a great fright to communicate the intelligence to Aunt Tseaou. This lady, along with Mrs. Wang, speedily arrived; and the room door being forced open, words cannot describe the horror and dismay that seized them when the sad spectacle within presented itself to their view! Old Mr. Wang was not long in hearing the dismal tale, and in an instant repaired to the spot. It were needless to relate the scene of sorrow that ensued ; neither the old gentleman nor his lady knew for what reason their beloved daughter had committed this rash act. But it was necessary to take some steps for the interment of the body; and a coffin being procured, what was once the lovely and accomplished Lwan, was, amid the tears and lamentations of the whole household, consigned to the silent grave! Let us now, however, relate how that his worship Keuee, the chief magistrate of Woo Keang district, received the public document from the military station of Nanyang. Having perused it, great was his surprise indeed; from times of old until then he had never heard of so extraordinary a case! It so happened that at that very time his worship Chaou, the Tuy Kwan [doctor of laws], in the train of the Imperial Censor Fan, had come to Woo Keang in the course of a tour for correcting abuses. Keuee forthwith laid the case before Chaou, and he brought it under the notice of the censor himself. His Excellency Fan took the poetry, the ballad, and the 'marriage contract, and turned them, and revolved them again and again, so as to make himself thoroughly acquainted with, and get at the very marrow of this strange business. He deeply lamented the talent of Keaou Lwan, worthy of a better fate, while he viewed with no less abhorrence the cruelty of Chow Ting Chang. He commanded his worship Chaou to make secret inquiries about the gentleman, and next day had him apprehended, and brought up to the censor's public court for examination. His Excellency Fan interrogated him himself. Ting Chang at first persisted obstinately in saying that the whole was untrue; but the marriage contract being produced as evidence, he did not dare open his mouth. His Excellencythe censor, in great wrath, commanded the lictors to give him fifty severe blows of the bamboo, and conduct him to the public prison. In the meantime he despatched a letter to the military station of Nanyang, to inquire if Keaou Lwan had in very deed strangled herself or not. After not many days, a reply came, containing the particulars of poor Lwan's unhappy end,. which the Imperial Censor Fan had Ting Chang taken out of prison and brought up a second time to his tribunal. The censor, in a voice of wrath, thus addressed him." To treat with levity or insult the daughter of a mandarin of rank, is one crime; being already betrothed to one wife, marrying another is a second crime; leading to the death of a party con-cerned, is a third crime. In your marriage contract it is written, if the man deceive the woman, may unnumbered arrows slay his body.' I have now no arrows here to slay thee; but," added he, raising his voice, "thou shalt be beaten to death with staves like a dog, so that thou mayst serve as a warning to all cold-blooded villains in future!” With that he shouted with a loud voice, as a signal to the bailiffs and lictors, upon who were in waiting. These, grasping their clubs of bamboo, rushed forward in a body, and tumultuously struck the wretched culprit, pieces of whose body flew about the hall in all directions, and in a moment a bloody and hideous mass marked the corpse of the betrayer of Lwan. Within the city, there was not one man who did not approve of this punishment, as well merited by his heartless cruelty. His father, Professor Chow, on hearing of this news, suddenly died of grief and indignation; and not long after, the daughter of Wei, whom Ting Chang had married, gave her hand to another. Reader, Why should a man court the wealth and beauty of a second bride, and turn his back on his already betrothed spouse? That it can bring him nothing but sorrow, let him read this story of bygone years. It is with no light feeling of sorrow we add, that Mr. Thom, the able translator of the foregoing tale, died towards the close of 1846 at Ningpo, where he had latterly filled the office of her majesty's consul. Mr. Thom was a Scotsman by birth, and by indefatigable industry, and the possession of excellent faculties, along with good literary taste, had achieved for him self an honorable distinction in China, where his services were in the course of proving valuable in no small degree to his country. Alas! like many sons of Scotia, who, relying on their own energies, have gone forth in quest of fortune, this amiable and accomplished individual perished in the midst of his usefulness, and has left many friends and relatives to lament his untimely loss. A FRAGMENT. 'Tis not the warm glance of young Beauty's bright eye, LIFE AND OPINIONS OF SOCRATES. (Concluded.) A little examination will also convince us, that the great doctrines of Socrates were by no means original discoveries of his own. It is commonly, but erroneously, supposed, that idolatry is the early commencement of religion among a people, upon which they improve as they advance in knowledge and civilization, until they attain a better and more rational faith. The fact, however, is, that all false religions are corruptions of a true faith, which was common to mankind in the first ages. This was the opinion of St. Paul, who was well acquainted with classic history. For, speaking of the heathen, he says: When they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.' In this he is sustained by history, and the opinions of the ancients themselves. So far from purifying their religion, as they increased in knowledge and refinement, the Greeks and Romans added to the number of their gods every year, until they became countless. Their best philosophers, in later ages, had a high reverence for the opinions of antiquity; and the higher up we follow the stream of moral sentiment, the purer does it become, which is a strong indication that it flowed originally from a pure fountain. Their poets sang, too, of a happy period, which the world at first enjoyed, and which they called the golden age, 'before' as Virgil says, 'impious men learned to feed upon the slaughtered herds,' and when, according to Ovid, Man, yet new, No rule but uncorrupted reason knew, Thus we find, before the time of Socrates, records, not faint nor few, of the same doctrines which he systematized. Anaxagoras, his great master, undoubtedly taught that pure, intelli |