Fick up a bar of iron all a-glow,

You burn your fingers while you scorch your foe.
Nay, those you have not singed foresee their fate,
And recompense your power with cordial hate.

H. What shall I do?

Does not a reverend seer

Gather good profit from a boundless fear?

If he is harmless, why am I attacked?

The sane are not more spiteful than the cracked.
This man delights in foxes, that in game:
Of fifty men, no two are just the same.
Whatever be the numbers of mankind,
So many different characters you'll find.
I imitate (with whom I cannot cope)
The polished couplet of the sprightly Pope.
A better man than either you or I,
He wrote as if his books were sitting by,
As if the thoughts which issued from his mind
Safe in their trusty hands were his to find;
Whate'er betided, verse was still the source
Whence flowed his wit, its polish and its force.
Thus the whole life and spirit of his age
Shows like a picture in his vivid page.
This man I follow always, but I strive
To wantonly attack no thing alive;

My rapier can be sheathed. Why draw it out
While neither knave nor blockhead prowls about?
Let rust devour its edge and dim its sheen,
I shall not quit my ease to make it keen.
But if a man provoke me, understand
He'd better clutch ten hornets in his hand.
I give him warning, for the town shall know,
How I can use it when I find a foe.

P. Attorneys still exist who speculate
On costs for libel; this may be your fate.
Another rogue, who finds his withers wrung,
May vent the secret poison of his tongue;
The critics of some slashing smart review
May take revenge for what they know is true;
In ambush lurk, from ambush slyly spring,
Puff like an adder, like an adder sting.
You may be over-confident, the wise
Shrewdly avoid the creatures they despise.

H. Aye, Nature, Darwin tells us, moulds the f..ce, And forms each gesture which denotes the race.

When danger threatens, violence is near;
All seek, he says, to frighten those they fear.
He must be right, I fancy, if you doubt,
Look at the facts which bear the maxim out.
Wolves show their teeth, and bulls decline their heads,
The fearful skunk persistent perfume sheds.
Why, if an instinct did not guide their acts
And make them keenly sensitive to facts?
So Palmer, when he murdered friend and wife,
Avoided clumsy bludgeon, tell-tale knife,
(A wolf will never raise his heels to smite,
A bull will never bark, or grin, or bite,)
Acted a sedulous, a loving part,

And poisoned each of them with perfect art.
Not to be tedious, if a calm old age

Expects me, and a lengthened pilgrimage,
Or death should suddenly, before my sight,
Rise, the black phantom of life's shortened light,
Rich, poor, in England, or, if Fate command,
The venturous settler in some foreign land-
Whatever shapes my life or guides its course,
Write on I will, and write I must, perforce.

P. Young man, I warn you; think what you provoke.
A mighty statesman never makes a joke,
And won't forgive one; if you're over-bold,
You'll have to live, believe me, in the cold.
The Tory hates and wrongs what he suspects,
The Whig complete subservience expects.
Think for yourself: the one will persecute,
The other say, he does not follow suit.
Decorous dullness is the thing that pays;

This earns the pudding, wit earns only praise.

H. Why, Pope and Dryden, when they first began

To write in this wise on the modern man,

To strip the knave who traded in disguise,
And show him as he is to all men's eyes,
To pluck the visor off in which he went,
Ambitious, cringing, mean and insolent,
Found no dislike among the wise and just,
For fools alone meet genius with distrust.
Were they offended when the scorching verse
Of Dryden clung to Shaftesbury like a curse?
Or when the blasé Hervey got his due,
And Pope portrayed him in his natural hue,

Did Mordaunt or did St. John blame his rage,
The bravest and the shrewdest of the age?
They galled the proudest when the case was strong,
They scourged the nation when 'twas in the wrong.
Their aims were honest, public were their ends,
Allies to virtue only, and her friends.

But when the task was done, and well-won ease
Led them to gossip under Chiswick's trees,

When Twickenham harboured many an honoured guest
And simple food maintained its natural zest,
How sportive were the friends, how quick the wit,
How genial was the mirth which welcomed it!
How the fresh flavour of their free discourse
Heightened the charm of life, and gave it force!
If Pope has passed away, the facts survive,
The subjects of his satire are alive.
Chartres and Cibber are the types of men
A little pains may find them out again.
So, as the human species has increased,
The race of dunces has not wholly ceased;
Grub Street has lost its authors, but a band
Of folks like them has settled in the Strand;
Lintot and Curll have vanished long ago,
But their successors flourish in the Row.

Nor Cumming nor Teiresias can deny
The truth of this unvarying prophecy:
The theme for satire never can be stale,
The crop of knaves and fools will never fail,
As long as greed and ignorance are rife,
And diamonds blaze upon a broker's wife.

Enough; the little wit I call my own,
No matter whether natural, borrowed, grown,
Was nurtured on the wholesomest of food,
The constant converse of the wise and good.
Whatever it may lack in verve and force
No man alive can vilify its source.
Malice is shrewd, at least before it bites;
'Tis a poor cur to him who turns and fights.
I hope you don't dissent.

P.
I don't define;
The warning's general, and it is not mine.
The danger, as I think, is mighty clear:
The law is very just, but very dear.
You overstep it; well, the case is tried,
And Hawkins prosecutes. The fact's denied,

I don't deny

If such a wise and righteous judge were there,
(You recollect Regina versus Eyre?)

In such a case perhaps "the cur" might fail,
And use his shambling legs to hide his tail.

November 1873.

EDWIN HERON.

Manners and Customs in China.

CHINESE DOMESTIC LIFE.

Of course you will stay on Shameen?" said a friend of mine one day in Hong Kong, as we discussed my journey to Canton, distant about a day's voyage by the Pearl River. She further explained to my interrogation that Shameen was a few acres 'of island rock ceded to the British by China after the taking of Canton; and although the rest of the city is open to foreigners, it is yet considered the correct thing to live on Shameen, which is as far removed from any converse with Canton as St. James's from St. Giles's. The "of course in the sentence quite decided me not to stop on Shameen. I wanted to study the Cantonese, and not the Shameenese. Thus it fell out one evening at sundown, under a ruddy after-glow, which transformed the scene to the resemblance of the last tableau in some delusive pantomime, I was ushered into my Chinese abode at Canton, over an arched bridge, which I attained from some outbuildings or structures -I scarcely know what name to give them. The bridge spannedor rather failed at the last extremity to span-a creek or one of the fifty branches of the Pearl River in which Canton is situated. Arrived at my side of the bridge, I had to make a good spring to land on a balcony of my house, one of the many with which all Chinese habitations are adorned.

The only other entrance (except for birds or fish) were some very shiny steps upon the other side of the dwelling, submerged at high tide by the Pearl River. Here the fish swam in, and were frequently stranded. They were "mud fish," of a peculiar flavour, but delicious eating. The birds entered through the apertures for doors and window frames, for with actual doors to open and windows to shut the Cantonese dispense themselves. They place a large screen before the doorway, which gives privacy sufficient for their need. The window-sashes are closed either by a sort of jalousie or thin matting. They do not surround their domesticities with the same mystery and secret precautions with which we envelop these proceedings in Europe. Human nature, they argue, has to sleep, and here is the mat upon which it stretches itself. Why conceal it? It also wants to eat, and it satisfies its appetite, no matter how many eyes are gazing. Tell a Chinese cook you are hungry, and he will immediately fetch his fire, his cooking utensils, his provisions, and cook under your very nose. He has no idea of concealing his operations in some far-away back

VOL. XLI.

E