Donna year 1870 we not only "supped but breakfasted, dined, and launched on horrors—Marathon Massacres, Tropmann Murders, Tientsin Horrors and all the piled up misery, tragedy, and carnage of the Franco-Prussian War made the year sadly memorable, It seems, however, that we have not done with dreadful scones, though the horror to which we refer is not so ghastly in its aspect as a battle, it is no less dreadful a visitation, We allude to the Famine at Tientsin, The afflictions of the dwellers in the Northern City are not "bleeding woes," bat they are none the less piteous to contemplate, and to reflect upon. For three months the waters have overflowed and the millet crops, the chief dependence of the population, have all been destroyed. The too faithful narratives of our Tientsin correspondent has placed our readers in possession of the result. Countless houses have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by the violent snd incessant downpour of rain that has deluged the entire district during the summer and autumn it follows therefore that the people ate roofless and starving. To quote the report, "These are the conditions under which over 2,000,000 of the population of the seaboard of this region are now ing." Now if we take into consideration the circumstances of these men, women, and children, "we shall find them to be as lamentable as it is possible to imagine. They are house-Jess and foodless, with a winter of fearfal severity to be faced. All the evils that are implied in the three words bunger, cold and nakedness lie before these Chinese unfortunates. Their fate will not be sudden, and sharp, and deadly. It will have to be waited for, first.with the restless agony that grows out of the presence of lingering hope, then with the dull apathy which is the wearisome product of petrifying despair. There will be no excitement to relieve their suffering, and no glory to brighten them. A great writer has described in words no reader ever forgets"'a vision of sudden death "—bow can it compare in awfalness with this reality of slow death? And we say advisedly, that unless some extraordinary and utterly unexpected cir-cam stance takes place, the deaths of thousands are certain; for the Government appears powerless to graph ple with the difficulty before it. A high official informed our correspon dent that the destitute population exceeded 200,000, and that the extent of the region suffering from the inundation exceeded ten thousand English square miles; now it is clear that to deal with a calamity like this, would Stax to the utmost of their powers, European statesmen of the highest ability. We must not forget that so recently as 1867, two millions of our fellow subjects died of famine along the western shore of the Bay of Ben gal. Twice the population of Denmark, or of Greece, eight Saffolks, six Hampshires, five-sixths of Scotland perished in Orissa four years ago. We should be amazingly offended if our Indian organization was compared with that of China, and such a comparison would indeed be absurd; there, however, we see feom actual facts that even our boasted system failed to meet a disaster akin, to that under which the northern part of this Empire is sufferitig. What than can we expect from the officials of China? "The Viceroy, we are told, busily praying toa snake, but all the mandarins high and low are powerless to meet the crisis. As yot hardly any appreciable quantity of food has been imported. And within a month the port of Tientsin will be closed by ice.
Tue student of Chinese, is often dis posed to smile at the absurdities of what may be called the Compradorio dialect, while the student of the Four Books looks upon the efforts of his fellow countrymen with unmitigated contempt. Yet there is, with all its absurdities, more sign of life in the strivings of the more humble scholar, who has at least made the discovery that the ability to represent new ideas is not to be found in the inflexible literary language of China, A swallow comb company may be an inadequate representation of an insurance office, yet, in the absence of a native word sufficiently representing the ideas intended to be conveyed, the compra-dare has only followed the example of all other languages, and introduced from
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.