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124 up in due course gameless, and this time utterly disgusted — somehow or other they never were late for meals — and we sat down to dinner, sorrowing that we should have to be away on our journey back before the sun was up the next morning.

We had little idea of doing anything else but going to bed as soon as possible after dinner — and, indeed, the boys had set up our camp-beds — when we were told that the villagers were going to have a dance in our honour, and were requested to go to the place where it was to be held. We found the whole village assembled, men, women, and children, in a large open space surrounded by trees, and with a house here and there at the edges. After they had given us seats, the dance commenced. The men all took hands and formed a semicircle, then came the married women, then the unmarried women, and lastly the children, till a great ring was formed. Then they began to sing, the men commencing, the married women taking it up, the unmarried women coming next, and the children following them, Apparently the men sang what would be equal to two lines of a song with us, and after the others had each done the same in their turn, went on with the next two, and so on. The ring was all this time moving round, first one way then the other, and at the same time extending and contracting itself (in the same way as is done with us sometimes, if I remember right, in the Lancers, in place of the "Grand Galop," or something or other), every one keeping time to the slow measures of the music, which, though monotonous, was not at all unpleasing. Altogether it was rather imposing as a sight, and would have been much more so had there been a moon, for the lanterns were few and far between. At 11 o'clock we expressed our intention of turning-in, as we had a long journey before us the next day, and after I had distributed a lot of small silver five-cent pieces among the children, which afforded immense satisfaction apparently, and which have doubtless by this time been converted into necklaces — the only use to which these people put silver coin of any kind — and when we had impressed upon the villagers our sense of their kindness and hospitality, we managed to get away to bed. The next morning we had breakfast in the dark, and were off long before the Pepo-hwans had stirred, for they have the rare virtue of not getting up till 8 o'clock or so. The journey back was accomplished in two days, and the less I say about it the better. I had left my heart behind me, and altogether it was very sad. Finding oneself among Chinamen again is such a dreadful experience, too. F.

 

 From The Pall Mall Gazette.

article in the Contemporary Review which the whole world attributes to Mr. Gladstone, chiefly on account of the singular paragraph neither admitting nor denying the authorship which was inserted in the newspapers at his request, contains several just and striking remarks on the change which has taken place in the character of English kingship during the last quarter of a century; but the facts which the writer has collected from his own observation and experience do not seem to us to justify his optimistic tone or that of his critics. He anxiously insists that the crown retains some fragments of actual power and a great amount of indirect influence; but he says little calculated to reassure those who, with the keenest sense of the value of all forms of authority, and of monarchy among them, look forward with great misgiving to the part which the crown may one day be forced to play under the changed conditions of the English Constitution. Such persons see that, in spite of the manifold understandings and usages by which the power of the crown is at present limited, there is nothing in the language publicly employed about the king or queen, and not much in the letter of the law, to distinguish kingly authority in England from kingly authority in Germany or Russia. They see, on the other hand, that this authority is ultimately exercised by a group of men chosen by the majority of the House of Commons, and they ask themselves what will happen if this group comes some day to represent a fierce and unscrupulous democracy. If the king becomes the name under which a power of this sort governs, what barriers stand in its way? What law would be broken if it swamped the House of Lords, dismissed every functionary holding office during pleasure, and, wherever the king is mentioned in an Act of Parliament, employed the authority or discretion vested in him exactly as it pleased and for its own immediate ends? There is plenty of evidence that in a highly 