"We have been called an Isle of Saints," said an Irish car-driver' once, "and certainly we have faith sufficient to deserve the title; for whether we pray tothe Virgin, or get upo petition to Parliament, we are all along expecting some one to do our work for us, and somehow or other never think of putting our own shoulders to the wheel, Faith without works, the Apostle tells us, is dead, and for my part I'd sooner see some attempt made to do something ourselves, than all this rigmarole about Church bills and tenant right and all that sort of thing." The Irishman was not far out in his sense of the difficulties of his country, and were he backed up byonly a few thousand: like himself, Ireland might possibly lose the name of the Isle of Saints, to be replaced by that of the Isle of practical men, The driver, however, little thought that he was drawing a parallel applicable to so distant a land as China, Not that the Celestial Empire ever got the name of being inhabited by a race of Saints, or indeed anything approaching to the degree of holiness necessary for such a sobriquet; but, lacking the title to holiness, it certainly seems to be deserving of that: of faith, or gullibility, whichever, in the opinion of our readers, will suit: the case best." It is nearly two years! since Chung How, as one of the last of his official acts before proceeding on his mission to' Europe, prayed the Emperor to confer some honorific title on the T'ienhow or Queen of Heaven, for the care she had taken of the maritime interests of the inhabit ants of the Expire, but more especially of the traffic in foreign arms, which, he naively remarks, demands even greater attention thin the industry of the people. Although report has it that the Ambassador, on his return, so far modified his views as to inform the Tsung-li Yamen that he had now learned to believe light-houses might be a greater protection to the coasting trade than even the T'ienhow herself, it is something wonderful how extensive has been the crop of super natural assistance which has turned up since the publication of Chung How's memorial. From Sion-nu-miao. to Sin-tsai, we have heard of numberless instances of how the local deities interfered to save the dynasty from the Taiping Rebels, and our only wonder now is, not that the Empire has been saved, but that' the powers above oF below ever allowed it to. come to such a pass. We knew a French skipper once, who, after expending all his inge-unity in getting his ship into'the middle-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.