The immediate cause of his death was a blow received during his interference between a black and a white "brother," fighting on a question of wages. But he had gradually wasted away after his tarring and feathering at Ching-wangfow, which preyed on his mind, as he said he had always preferred the Chinese to his own countrymen, from their peaceful and trading disposition. Just before his death he wandered much in his mind, and having desired a little negro, who waited on him, to kill a hornet that was threatening him and beware of his sting, he said, it put him in mind of the French nation stinging the busy bees of England in the glass hive of industry. It is supposed that he alluded to the celebrated "Great Exhibition," which was to have taken place at the time Papacy was introduced into England. We reckon that this man, by assisting to overturn the balance of power in Europe, was the cause of more blood being shed than the celebrated Emperor Napoleon, whose nephew went through such extraordinary vicissitudes, ending as a garçon perruquier, in the conquered city of London, where his lively and engaging manners used to attract so many of our (then) Republican citizens. Our great monarch of illustrious descent is said to have inquired with some curiosity into the fate of this neglected celebrity. The last telegraph from Russia announced the meeting of their States General, convened this morning, to deliberate especially upon the incorporation of Nepaul with their Oriental territory. END OF PART I. SATIRICAL, MORAL AND DESCRIPTIVE. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE. It is curious, in so practical and mathematical matterof-fact an age, how extensively both theorem and problem are worked from wrong data. It is an age of few brilliant virtues and few great truths. Self-sacrifice is so rare as to be considered forced and unnatural even on the stage, and is doubted in poetry or a novel. There is a great fusion of good and evil. Startling crime is only repressed; because the facilities of discovery are so much greater, and punishments are lessened, not in accordance with the improvement of human morality, but in the ratio of our progress in science and mechanics. Still, the selfishness of a monied age and of a plethoric empire predominates. There is no heroism extant. THE KNAVE OF SOCIETY. What manner of being thrives best in society and the world? A mean, obsequious shoe-buckler, or at best some Q round-visaged rogue who was popular at school for his easy cruelty. A grazer on the world's common, whom folks ask out, they know not exactly why, because he has a damnable smile, and is no better than his neighbours; because he sings like a mock bird of the opera; because he bows well, or can speak ill of his neighbours-a fellow who has no indenture in his framing, where good and evil make teeth with each other. A fellow altogether smooth and indifferent. A cement of fools and knaves, that fills up society. This man rubs his hands by the fire that burns your house down, yet you cannot touch him for smiling. It is not his affair. But he shall betray your confidence as easy as he will unloose a shoe-buckle, and if Misfortune meet him in the street, he will shun her like a poor friend. SAINTLY HYPOCRITES. There are, we know, some saintly folk who pretend never to believe that the world is evil, and who will find fault with the writings of Juvenal, whom they call bad, whilst they refuse to accord to Lord Byron the innate virtues of a noble heart. These men would, however, gloat over a murder, and pry into the actual vice which their nerves or their conscience cannot bear to see lashed and chastised in print. They are hypocrites, who would carry rose-water to the trial of a Manning, but, uninfluenced by necessity, would still be present there. They have no objection to look sin familiarly in the face, but must avoid a general knowledge of it. They dare not call things by their names, and have actually constructed such a temple |
