We are now passing through the penultimate phase of the Yunnan indroglio, and, like the atargazors, waiting for the precise conjunction of Venus with Sol, in order to observe the transit of the planet across the central orb of our system; 10 the political astronomers are all on tiptoe of expectation to discern the im. pending collision between Britannin and the Dragon of the Middle Kingdom, and to forecast the prospects of a peaceful or warlike solution to the expected encou:
Doubtless, there are data for divining future possibilities, which the officially informed philosophers will be able to put together, and so arrive at results that are wen probable; but the ai pellet (among whom your humble correspondent finds himself unceremoniously classed) are very much in the dark, and can obtain but shadowy, distant views of the volcanic flames which occasionally emerge from the edge of the Peking Phosbus, and which betoken the internal raging fires that are exhausting its powers of heat and Jight—the causes of which remain as mya terious us the origin of the luminous coruscations in a solar eclipse.
Now, what do you think of cading the above, that words of wisdom, like the doments of pompous phrases, were going to reveal to you the Stale nating the indigos nese mendacity and astuteness, without yetting beyond the preliminary stage of assimilating auch hard stut? to the nourishment required for the healthy development of the international statesman; but if those were your "first thoughts," it is to be hoped that you have followed the excellent advis of Machiavelli, and rejected them sum marily; for, as that careful student of human nature observed, they are sure to be wrong." If you had selected n certain physician to keep you an courant of what in passing in political regions, his experience of the symptoms of defeat or success in the health of his diplomatic patients might have detected some ground on which to build a theory of how the Yunnan negotiations ure turning; but your humble servant has never had the honor to feel the pulse of the great actors in the present Peking drama, xnd can hardly remember having had more than a cursory glance at their imperturbable features, from which to hazard a conjecture of what their busy brains were contemplatin It was rumoured here, on respectable cond-rate authority, that a case containing several bottles of Eau sedative was seen being taken on board one of the boats, supposed to belong to a Foreign Legation, going to Peking; and the same irreproachable authority declared that the mixture had been ordered of unusual strength for administration to the Tsung-Yamen in case of over-restlessness. A few bottles of this remarkable liquid had been offered, on dit, with th est of motives, lo His Excellency Li, but they were all broken io the unpacking, and the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.