concealing fugitive deserters, so that they may not fall
into the same mischief with them.

Fourteenth.—" Pay up all the taxes as early is
possible, in order to stop the dinning application of the
tax-gatherer.

Fifteenth.—" A strict police surveillance ought to
be kept up in every town and village, so that you may
have effectual means of checking theft and robbery.

Sixteenth.—" Do not cherish any feeling of revenge
or animosity, in order that you may set a proper value
upon human life."

The principles embodied in the Sage
Maxims of Kanghee, and in their
commentaries or paraphrases, are, so far as they
go, unexceptionable, being worthy of the
dictates of common sense, and inferences from
human experience and observation.
Nevertheless, it is to be observed that, professing,
as the book does, to define the whole duty of
man, there is nothing said in it of relations
that are beyond man, earth, and time. In
this respect, then, the morality of these
"words of wisdom " must be pronounced to
be found wanting. Their final object is laid
down by the emperor Yoong-ching in the
words, '' that all cherishing the spirit of
kindness and courtesy, might enjoy an eternal
reign of peace." To promote political
morality, to get the taxes punctually paid,
and to save trouble to the occupier of the
throne, securing for him, rather than for his
subjects, " the reign of peace," was obviously
the purpose of the Tartar maxims.
Nevertheless, they are not to be blamed. The
religion of the Chinese rarely takes a higher
flight. Seldom does the Chinese preacher,
never does the Chinese hearer, look beyond
the world in which he lives.

HONOUR.

HONOUR is tender human love,
Late seen and touched by each of us.
Again descended from above,
And changed to be ubiquitous.
Noli me tangere! 'Tis grown
Conscious of self: yet if the way
Of Honour is to have his own,
'Tis but in care that others may.
He plies no self-suspecting strife
His own repute with men to raise;
He thinks them just; and lives his life
Conferring, not beseeching praise.
He greatly scorns their faithless mood
Who, traitors to the social tie,
Believe the ill before the good,
And benefit of doubt deny;
And nobly, when he cannot know
Whether a 'scutcheon's dubious field
Carries a falcon, or a crow,
Blazons a falcon on the shield:
Yet careful ever not to hurt
God's honour who creates success,
His praise of even the best desert
Is but to have presumed no less;
And, should his own deed plaudits bring,
He's simply vex'd at heart that such
An easy, yea, delightful thing
Should move the minds of men so much.
His home is home; his chosen lot
A private place and private name;
But, if the world's want calls, he'll not
Refuse the indignities of fame.

BRIGHT CHANTICLEER

IT must have happened to most reasonable
persons who have practically studied the
"Trivia " of Mr. John Gay, and have
endeavoured to adapt its maxims to common use in
the difficult feat of walking the streets of
London, to have made a miserable mistake in
the attempt to accomplish a short cut from
the Strand to Oxford Street, and after some
hours of desperate and frantic marching,
and countermarching, to discover themselves
hopelessly and irretrievably lost in Seven
Dials. I ought to be tolerably well up in my
Dials, for I lived in Great Saint Andrew
Street, once; yet I declare that I never
yet knew the exact way, in or out of that
seven-fold mystery. There is always one
thing wanting to solve the topographical
enigma. My first, my second, and so on up
to my sixth — inclusive, of this charade of
streets, I have, after long years of study and
experience, mastered ; but my seventh is yet
in the limbo of things unknown ; and, for
want of it, I can't unravel the riddle of Seven
Dials at all. So have I known, and know.
I know a most estimable young married lady
who has an admirable recipe for plum-pudding ;
aye, and could make it as admirably,
but for one little thing. What that little thing
is— salt, sugar, spice, an egg the more, or a
table-spoon of flour the less — she, I, no one can
tell,— but for the want of the one little thing
unknown the pudding is invariably spoilt to
the casting of gloom over Christmas and the
overflowing of tears from the hostess. Many
of the delicious condiments stick to the cloth,
and what does come to table of the
meritorious, because the well-meant pudding is a
stodgy mass of geology boiled soft — the clayey
formation very apparent, and the red
sandstone uppermost.

Supposing the peripatetic to have well lost
himself in Seven Dials; supposing him to
have paraphrased the famous " water " line
in the Ancient Mariner, and to have cried out,
despairingly—

Dials, Dials everywhere,
And not a street I know.

Supposing him to have addressed himself for
information successively to a policeman, a
costermonger with a barrow, a woman with a
black eye, a boy with a sack round him (and
nothing else) and a man whose presence is
perceptible more by the sense of smell than
by that of sight, and who is too drunk to do
anything but stand in the middle of the Dials.
Supposing him to have been told to move on,
to have been mocked, cursed, hooted, and to
have had one oystershell, and one turnip-
stalk cast at him by way of reply, and
supposing him, finally, to have become so wearied