11th November.
'THE traditional friendship between Italy and Great Britain was strengthened by the brilliant welcome given to King Edward on his recent visit to Rome, and will receive, we may be sure, a further impulse from the visit which the King and Queen of Italy are to pay to London in the course this month. In Victor Emmanuel ILI, who enters to-day on his thirty-fifth year, Italy has a King who endeared himself to his future subjects before he asczaded the throne some three years ago, and she has made him: still more loved and respected since ty his undoubted talents, his kindliness, and his acknow ledged' straightforwardness: certaining how many there were of them, their rate of growth, nor their! relative numerical strength as compared with other nations and peoples. Almost all investigations of this sort owe their origin to foreigners, who have so often repeated their conclusions as to the preponderance of the Chinese, that the latter have, by "reflex action," come to repeat the observation themselves. It is rare to find a Chinese, unless he has come largely under foreign influence, who knows or cares anything about the population of the eighteen provinces asa whole, his own province, his department, county, or city. The only way in which he can meet the foreigner's incessant inquiry, "How many?" is either to retort "Who knows?" or else " Many, many," with ube suppressed idea that the whole inquiry is into the realms of the ess lly unknowable and useless, All Chinese have a vague idea that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.