By rae Vox, rar Ancapescox A. E. Monte, 3.n, (Continued).
My memory has brought me down now through twenty-five years out of the seventy years of recollections. I shall not trouble my readers with so minute history of the succeeding years 1861-1907; especially since I have given elsewhere a detailed account of some of these years—the T'aiping Rebellion, and of the aftermath of the great harvest of woe.
There are, however, a few events of world-wide interest which I must allude to, as they seemed to touch me in my onward life.
Mrs, Moule and I came to China by sailing ship in the year 1861. The terrible American Civil War was raging then; and when after eighty days out of sight of land, between Land's End and Christmas Island, we reached Anjer, the sorrow of that conflict was idly brought before us. We found at Anjer four American whalers at anchor; with the captain's wife on board one of the vessels, whom we sent such poor delicacies as our coarsely provisioned ship could collect. They had been out from home four years; and bad not heard © whisper of their country's sorrows, and of the Federal and Confederate fortunes.
On December 14, 1861, the Prince Consort died "The shadow of whose loss, drew like eclipse.
Darkening the world."
The news reached us in Ningpo by the same mail which brought the news of the imminent danger of war between America and England, in consequence of the seizure on the high seas by Captain Wilkes of the Confederate Commissioners to Europe, who bad embarked on an English shi never forget the distress and gloom which shrouded our weekly Prayer Meeting that day in the North Bank Chapel—and the electric drawing of hearts together, and the feeling that such @war would. be a -grest crime. In 1870 shortly after Sedan I saw, significantly enough at Waterloo Station, Napoleon the Third. He wason his way down to Windsor to cell oh the Queen, and he retarned with dignity the respectful salutations of the English crowd, always generous to those in calamity. This was not long after the singular prophetic cartoon in Punch"
Prop! of the shade of the first Napoleon warn- afternoon ing the third of that name from the warpath—in Manzoni's words, did Bygone years in rushing train Smite on his soul amain The tents he seemed to see And the battering cannons course, And the fishing of the infantry And the torrent of the horse."
I mentioned the Emperor as a visitor, in the earlier days of his exile in England, st s bouse near our old home. Eight or nine years ago in Suffolk, we made the acquaintance of French Princess, daughter of the great Napoleon's great Lieutenant, Morat, afterwards King of Naples. She had been a bright star of the
of brilliancy and order. It was! French Court dying its short period pathetic to hear her talk of the glory departed. These shifting scenes in dynasties and in the map of Europe and of the world, are reflected faintly in the extraordinary changes in fashion, many of which I can remember. Playing cricket matches in lofty chimney-pot hats, which you see in old pictures of early English cricket, was before my time; bat I have played the game in a way wholly unknown now, namely with bats at least twice the thickness of a good ordinary match bat; very heavy and bard to swing round for a leg drive, but driving with astonishing power, when you could command an on-drive.
Crinolines, said to be threatening to come in again, were the awe and the indescribable incumbrance in street or omnibus or carriage fifty years ago. My dear wife detesting the fashion, abandoned it at our wedding, braving what she supposed would be her fate, the sneer of fashion. But no, she was announced, much to ber surprise, as in the very height of the highest just bursting fashion, for exactly at that time crinolines bad been abandoned in high quarters. I have seen Chinese fashions change, long before the present craze for something new. When we arrived in Ningpo in 1861, and long after, Chinese girls of fifteen or sixteen or married women wore their hair set off behind by wha-looked like dragon-fly wings, great folding frames of whale-bone art tificial hair affixed to the head, and sometimes reaching nearly half-way dowa the back. These suddenly disappeared and are never seen now except on the beads of female barbers and go-betweens.
When again in England, after ten years interval in 1880, I came twice by rather out-of-the-way and casual circumstances close to our great and peace-loving King—not so near as my brother Handley was st the King's Coronation, for as Bishop of Darbam he was the. King's right-hand supporter, and held the King's crown for s moment, when the King himself eagerly reached forward to raise the fainting Archbistop. intercourse was very dificrent.
I was) at Chillingham, Lord Tankerville's glorious castle and park, and forest, near the border and in sight of Chevy Chase. The meeting I was to address in the great Hall was fixed for the jand as [was very anxious to see the celebrated wild white cattle (this herd and one other are the only survivors of the ancient indigenous British wild ox) I was up at break of day, and saw them first some way off, gleaming white as they came out of the thick bushes and forest glades where they had spent the night. Theo the head keeper, who as well as his master the Earl had nearly lost his life from a farious member of the herd, piloted me by a long detour to get to the leeward of the cattle, so that they might not descry us. We succeeded and came up to them at noon without being suspected. There were more than forty of them lying down. The King, then Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Connaught, bad been piloted by the same old keeper along the same route a few weeks previously. Well, I said to myself, what am I to give this grand functionary for this trouble? No tip below ten shillings will be even looked at by him, and ten ings I cannot and will not afford! What is to be done? Suddenly patting my hand into my pocket, I came across some loose Chinese cash. I produced one "Do you see this coin, my friend" I said casually to the great man. This is standing la astonishment, " you Chinese money? " Bir" he exclaimed,
don't say it" "1 do," said I. "And would you care to keep the coin? (I did not enlarge on the fact that it was worth the twentieth part of " penny.)
You don't mean that?" he said "Indeed I do and please accept two more.""** Well, well," he exclaimed again "Tam the proudest nan on this country side" "And so with much mutual affability, and talking in his manly way of the eternal home where we hope to meet, we parted; and my tip was perhaps honourably paid.
The year utter this event, "I was appointed to preach at Cambridge before the University in Great St. Mary's Church. I was entertained by Dr. Butler, the Master of Trinity, Mater'e Loge; and slept in a tapestry-hang room, next door to & room in which, as I was told, subsequently, the King had slept not long. before, as he was desirous to bear the celebrated Trinity Lodge ghost, The King lay awake, and listened in vain; bat I knowing nothing, or forgetting all about the story, did hear it, and on two successive nights. Ushered by a stately butler into my room, well lit, and with a roaring fire, as it wax bitterly cold weather, I sat up till nearly one in the morning preparing my sermon for the next day:—I then retired in good order, the fire still bright, and a night light burning. Suddenly overhead I.heard a heavy burried tramp, as of an undergraduate going to end fro' from his sitting-room to his bedroom: end then great bang es of a falling box: and silence, 1 turned round, and went to sleen,; aot|khiowing, what it was, though
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.