Our city, which contains something between one and two hundred thousand inhabitants, is rather enlivened just now by the presence of three thousand or more young men, who are all about to enter the lists of their examination for the first step of literary rank. Their presence suggests—although the surroundings are sadly different—the troops of joyous, rollicking, and sometimes rather boisterous youths who make glad so many of our charming university towns in New England and Old England too. Can these examinations, when Uleached in the new sunlight of a hi civilisation, produce the pure, lig scholarship of thuse dear old haunts children may seo it.
fined to literary candidates only, and is ded' examination, takin place halfway between the regular great" examinations which occur at intervals of three years, and attract, in addition, a thousand or two aspirants for military honours.
The chief topic of real news among these young men is to the effect that the Governmental telegraph-line will, ere winter stiffens the river, reach us here, and con-neet the Vicetoy's yamen with his recently more-frequented one at Tientsin, The rumble of the steam-engine is coming in the wake of the telegraph by-and-bye. Already the Governor of Shansi has sent one memorial to Peking, praying His Majenty for a railroad to the iron-mines and coalfields of that hardy province, Such railroad three years ago would probably have saved that afflicted portion of the Empire hal a million of souls, by carrying grain over the dreary plains of Chihli anc the rocky passes of Shansi. The proposed route was at that time mapped out by the Rev. Timothy Richard of Ta'i-yuen Fu at the request of the Governor, and the plans he then made are still lying snugly away as a sort of nest-egg for a happier an more hopeful future.
6th Oct,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.