The spring is fast ripening into summer the noontide air vibrates beneath the "ong ann; but the nights are still breezy and the mornings delicious; there is no need of punkahs; the mosquitos have not yet become a plague; the cicadas are still fast asleep in the trees, whose young leafage is swiftly losing ite first delicate trans-patency and cvarsening into darker tints, The magnolias have shed their waxen petals; the roses are long since overblown; and a couple of pomegranate trees have hung out their hundreds of scarlet blossoms underneath my windows, which look on to the Bund, By sitting well back in the room, you observe that each verandah opening frames just such a picture as you have seen, times without number, depicted on Chinese sculls. 'There is a strip of sky, a breadth of tawny river flecked with sails and fringed sline of northern shore, and a narrow crowded foreground. 'The ti while changing from hour to hour, retain' for the most part that quiet, pale, delicate character which the Chinese artist loves. The subdued; the picture Details shift contin: ese succession of quaint and otley form There is much stir and bustle, x constant coming and going among the swarms of native craft that line the Bund, loading and unloading cargo, hoisting sail, casting anchor, making ready for a journey with volleying crackers and beat of yang.
In calm weather like this, it is scarcely possible to realise what a vast bulk of water ing between those level shores. But as when a north-woster and the river is like a on, then it is a sight to watch the crowded boats, huddled under the lee of the hulk, tossed and churned together with dull wooden sounds,—groat junks dancing like corks on the water, while the swayin; pontoons creek dismally. As night follo the alarm and commotion grow; many plaintive cry mingles with the whistle of the wind, and many a little craft founders in the darkness Sometimes the chair of a mandarin passes up thy Bund, with tatterdemalion retinue sometimes a priestly procession with swinging.cousers and nasal chant; sometimes a agundofaoldiers slouches by, straw-bonneted, in queer ugly uniforms of blue faced with deli here are knots of boatmen, scarlet, an officer in civilian garb lounging.
vehement in debate; their faces burned almost black by the sun past, pale and round-shouldered; country folk, in single file, who gaze around, bewildered by the foreign streets. The stream of Bund-coylies, those dock-labourers of the Far East, waxes and but seldom dies out in waking hours; and often late at night sleep is frighted away by their clamour, The hotter the weather, the more deafening grow those lugubrious rhythmical howls. Quite apart feom the work they do, it is no trifle to produce such an astounding volume of and where they find the requisite muscular energy for the double task is an Oriental mystery unfathomable for me. I suppose they know best themselves; they plesd the exhilaration and sense of companionship; and very certain it is that an attempt to silence them by force would provoke a worse anti-foreign riot than any we have witnessed yet.
The white man who can listen to this concert sil unmoved has yet to be born. 'An even temper and a philosophical turn will, however (if you happen to be thus admirably endowed), carry you along way There is my deieud the Professor, for instance, whose ear for music is as fine as his flair on an archaeological track.' Just listen 3 moment," sys he to me the other evening, sitting iz my verandah, along the Bund. "Don't you recog-nisse what they're trying to sing? Why, that's the what's-his-aame chorus from the Tumbour-Major—uno, the Grande Duchesse,—you know what 1 mean," and off he ashes to the piano and bangs away bri ntly. Sure enough there is a likeness. "There you are," says he; "of course they do it rudely,' they make mistakes; but niaskee, it's a great relief to have found out what all the bawling really means, I recommend you that plan; you'll find it much loss wearing on the nerves. Always try to identify their little song, whatever it may be, with some melody of your acquaintance en again! That's an Andalusian ai
second tims. 'I remember a very chermery pretty cue too," and off he goes a ing girl singing that to me on a summer evening in Granada; ah! that is a good years agu." Neod I say that a senti-I narrative follows, which I am not at liberty to make public? The Professor will live to a hundred, and till be young.
That Bund-coolie, with his carrying-pole across his shoulder, his bronze body glisten-ug in the sun as if newly oiled, is worth study; if only to show how action can give a His life ie" round of hopeless drudgery; his calling that of a beast of burden; his home some poor mud hovel, where many mouths wait. to be fod out of his few conis a day. Ho lives from hand to mouth; and should sickness throw him out of work for any groat length of time he will surely die, A hatd lot, beyond you or nay; but is he morose and gloomy over it? Not be. Look at yonder, pai who have stopped to breath themsel flinging down a load fit for an elephant, The honest fellows are full of gaiety and good-humour, laughing and exchanging rough banter at the top of their voices, Your true pessimist must be lapped in all nurtured on roses. As for the Chinese carrier he is notinerely patient, but cheerful and content; and with " lighter heart, may than you or I, plies his rude task. So he slong, rutilant, strepitant, much-juring,—a sight for gods, a marvel to men, Those who cater for his simple wants are here in force: the muffin-men, calling "Man-thou!" in a melancholy booming voice; the vendors of cucumbers, water-chestnuts, sliced lotus-root, and acrid gree! peaches; the itinerant restaurateur dit playing on hie duplicate atoll plenteous bowls of rice, with pickled cabbage or other due seasoning, polo dumplings enclosing pellets of pork-fat, thick brown soups, crisp wheaten cakes fried in oil, and the ove welcome tea.
'A prodigious bustle attends that great event of the day, @ steamer's arrival. I like to watch them coming in, athetic folk may prate as they please; to me a mighty steamer, making that stately sweeping curve to come alongside, wheeling about its centro as lightly as a child'. boat, or breasting the flood in mi while it tosses backward its maguil plume of raven black, is always a grand sight. But best of all Tenjoy the spectacle on & moonless night. Out in the solemn shadows deeper shadow than the rest, a vague mass, gemmed with clusters of coloured fires, and sending deep into the water below its colonnades of light, many-shafted, pale-gloaming, it glides dreamlike past: a gorgeous exhalation, an elfin phantasmagory Yonder old hulk, again, may seem to you irredeemably prosaic; yet watch it this evening us it blackens in the level light, and say if all the old timbers, every post and spar and rope and railing, are not transfigured, bathed that glow, which no painter can more than feebly' suggest upon his canvas? Look; the cloud-bank along the horizon is grown dark, save at one spot where the an haa gone duo in a blood-red bath,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.