especially should remember that he advocated the Catholic claims nearly a quarter of a century before the passing of the Emancipation Act by a Government of which he was a member. He sometimes held extreme views, and supported them with vigor, and occasionally with bitterness. Had he imparted less of a certain arrogance of tone into his speeches, he might have made fewer enemies; and his manner toward strangers or those who did not know him certainly savored of harshness; but, as was said of Dr. Johnson, there was "nothing of the bear about him except the skin.”

As depicted by Maclise in Fraser's Magazine, he is shown to have had a fine, intellectual head of the type of Canning, with a kindly and slightly melancholy expression of face. The

same impression is conveyed by the fine portrait of him painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and when we add that he was slightly under the middle height, slender, and well knit, the reader has a faithful presentation of the outward appearance of this most remarkable and much maligned man. Forty years have passed away since he died, on August 10th, 1857. Let us hope that we may not have to wait many more years for that. complete biography which all who love justice will be glad to see; for calumny need only fear the truth. Let us also hope that his biographer, whoever he may be, will approach his subject in the right spirit, and will "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."-Gentleman's Magazine.

It was a gusty day in early March. The east wind tore with hurricane force along the Strand, filling the loose cover of my umbrella until it resembled a half-open parachute.

"Key rings! Laces !-Yes, sir; umbrella ring-one penny, sir; thank you."

I slipped the ring over the handle of my refractory umbrella, and felt that even a penny at times could save a vast amount of inconvenience.

"Let winds be shrill, let wave roll high, I fear not wave nor wind."

Again the gutter merchant. Byron, and Childe Harold "'!

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I scanned him curiously, carefully tucking the new edition of the Rubáiyát I had just purchased under my arm to excuse my hesitation.

"Omar Khayyám, I see, sir !" He smiled and nodded toward the book. "A sweet singer-aye, a sweet singer," he added softly, almost reverently.

I was startled. What manner of man was this to sell boot-laces and such trifles in the gutter of a London street?

His clothes were old but clean and tidy. No two buttons of his coat or vest were alike in pattern, but there were none missing. There were numerous patches in all his outer garments, but no holes, no tatters. His boots, moreover, were polished till my own looked dingy by comparison. I was becoming interested. I raised my hand to my clean-shaven chin and looked at him boldly but curiously. His eyes followed mine; intelligent eyes, with just the suspicion of a merry twinkle in their brown depths.

40

Then

my eyes fell till they rested on his shaggy, straggling beard. I saw his hand-a white, refined hand, I had time to notice-go up to his beard and tug at it sharply.

66 Beards are an abomination, but shaving is a luxury," he said.

"Omar Khayyám is a luxury, too, my friend," I responded.

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Yes, for such as I," came the reply, with just a tinge of bitterness.

I felt sorry I had spoken so carelessly. "It swallowed up the profit on a lot of umbrella rings to buy it," he said, pulling out of his coat pocket another copy of the Rubáiyát.

A week of short commons, since repaid by a continual feast," he said, tapping the cover lovingly; and then, with the glitter of the poet enthusiast in his eye, he quoted :

"A book of verses underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread-and thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness.
Oh! Wilderness were Paridise enow!"

"Laces! key rings! umbrella rings!" He had moved on to fresh customers. I thought for a moment and then reluctantly went on my way.

"This world is a curious place, Louis," I remarked to my friend Lambient as we sat smoking after dinner that same evening.

"Queen Anne is dead," he murmured, blowing out a cloud of smoke and watching it as it curled and weaved. above him in steel blue rings.

I ignored the sneer. It was Louis' way he, the smart junior of an old firm of lawyers, was sometimes too smart to be pleasant.

"I bought an umbrella ring from a gutter merchant to-day who quoted Shakespeare, Byron, and Omar Khayyám while I waited."

I paused to give Louis the opportunity of showing an interest in my curious find."

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He yawned.

"My dear Hal," he said slowly, "London is full of such commonplace people. The real curiosity is the man who is not a curiosity." He lay back in his easy-chair to give me a chance of reflecting on his paradox.

After a short pause he went on :

"Find a man who always fits his place like the round peg in a round hole-a man with one nature, with not an idea or attribute above or below his environment-then label him 'valuable,' and place him in a museum of rare curios. He would be worth it, my friend he would, indeed."

"I deny," I said sharply," that my 'find' is commonplace. Just reflect—a poetical gutter merchant !"

"Ah! it is only a question of degree; he may not be so common a type as the caddish nobleman, the lying parson, or the studious scavenger, but he is commonplace nevertheless."

There was another pause. Then Louis sat up in his chair.

"Do you know, Hal, I have long wished to meet a fool ?"

"Most lawyers have the same desire," I interrupted.

"A fool," he went on undisturbed, "who is always a fool. I have met a few really capital fools, but sooner or later they have all, save one, ceased to interest me, because they inconsistently had sensible intervals. The consistent one-natured man is a rarity."

"You admit finding one ?"

66 Yes, a client of ours. Don't reply that that proves the case; it is too obvious a retort and lacking in humor.

"He commenced life early as a fool,' Louis resumed," persevered, and is still in the same line of business, if I can judge from our experience of him. A man named Withington. In his very young days he fell madly in love with the most notorious flirt in the Midlands. He was too great a fool to realize that she was fooling him. In due course he proposed, but she laughed his love to scorn.

"Still consistent, he persevered till she killed his hopes by marrying a flash adventurer with little money and less character. Had Withington had but one sensible interval he would have gayly laughed and become an intimate friend of the family.' He left England, however, confiding his affairs to my firm. my firm. We heard occasionally from him, and having realized all his assets by his instructions, forwarded, from time to time, remittances to his Continental quarters. He evidently went the pace, for the comparatively large

sum we had held rapidly dwindled under his repeated calls. At last he returned. His foolishness was still with him, for his first inquiry was for the woman who had ridiculed his love.

"The cruelty of her husband had weakened her mind, until, when he died a felon, she became mad and was confined in a pauper lunatic asylum.

"This we told him, but the fool immediately instructed us to find a private home for her, and to invest and take in trust such of his capital as would provide this for her till her death.

"There was little or nothing left for Withington after this had been settled. We never hear from him now, but we occasionally send him reports as to her well-being under cover to an address we have."

"Now I call that man a consistent fool," Louis said decisively; "a greater curiosity than your pedler, and a man with one nature."

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"Yes," I answered, a nature to be envied."

We drifted into other matters and the pedler was forgotten.

For many days I stopped, as opportunity came, to speak with the gutter merchant. He resented curiosity, I soon discovered, but was willing, nay, eager, to speak of books-always books -never of himself.

It was a strange acquaintance, but it ripened as my inquisitiveness grew. For his part he saw in me only a fellow lover of books, and not a spy into the mystery surrounding him.

One day, with much misgiving, I ventured to ask him to dine with me. The flush that came into my face did not escape his notice, for a cloud came into his eyes and a momentary frown appeared on his brow. He smiled faintly the next minute, and, looking somewhat slyly at his clothes, thanked me and declined.

Then his eyes rose to mine clear and steady, and, looking at me intently, he

said

"You are welcome to my attic, sir, if you would like to see my library." There was an unmistakable emphasis on the concluding words that left no doubt as to his meaning.

I paid many visits to his attic in one

of the courts off Drury Lane, and the first feeling of wonder at the numerous and select books which littered his tidy one room never left me. The pedler was a man of taste and education; beyond doubt a man sadly out of place in that attic off Drury Lane and the Strand gutter. But he never satisfied my ever-growing curiosity. Once he answered the inquiry in my eye as I looked first at him and then at a squalid crowd in the court below, by quoting his beloved Rubáiyát :

"The worldly hope men set their hearts

I eagerly seized the opening he gave

"How came-these ashes-Mr.--" I paused.

Tom," he said.

"Mr. Tom," I corrected.

"No, plain Tom," came swiftly in cold tones; "that is quite sufficient." I bit my lips. I understood the rebuke and said no more.

I have been with him when he dined. Ye gods! dined! Bread and cheese, never more, washed down with water, and I dared not offer him the means for better fare.

Truly he was a strange fellow, but a man, if ever one lived.

The summer came with its stifling heat, and went; the autumn too was rapidly giving place to winter's chill, that horror of the half-clad gutter merchants. Tom, as I had got to call him, changed not, neither did his clothing.

Through heat and cold he wore the same, a proof he had none other.

I had occasion to leave town for a month in November, and on my return passed down the Strand to chat with Tom. He was not there. I turned that way again on the next day and on the next, but he still was missing. stood on the curb and pondered. Was he ill-perhaps dead!

"Yer a lookin' fer Shakespeare Tom, ain't yer, guv'ner ?"

I turned and saw the grinning face. of a paper boy whose "pitch" was next to Tom's.

"He's a injying of 'isself, 'e is," the

I could have struck that boy in the face as he thus shattered my idol.

Slowly I made my way to Tom's attic. Even as I reached his door I heard him quoting Omar Khayyám, but the voice was thick, the tone changed; there was a hiccup here and there which sadly destroyed the "sweet singer:"

"Yesterday this day's madness did prepare; To-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair; Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;

Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where."

I opened the door. Was that Tom who, with all the fire and clear light of intelligence in his eyes quenched by drink, bade me enter?

"Pryin'-hic-as-usual-hic-eh ?" I turned on my heel and left him, nor returned again till a week had passed.

God forgive me for being such a coward! I might have saved him, for now he was dying.

"A spell of hard drinking on a halfstarved stomach," was the doctor's comment, shrugging his shoulders, as he and I together watched the wasted gray face of Shakespeare Tom.

He won't last till to-morrow." Tom opened his eyes and saw me. A smile flickered across his lips, and in scarcely audible voice he murmured :"For some we loved, the loveliest and the best

That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest,

Have drunk their cup a Round or two before,

And one by one crept silently to rest." He put out his hand and faintly

Hour

gripped mine-the grip of friendship he meant it for-and I turned away my face so that no one might see it. after hour I watched the shadows deepening; the gray mask of death coming slowly; and his hand was still in mine.

Once I watched his lips move, and then I caught a soft murmur :—

Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter and the Bird is on the wing."

Then a long sigh, and I knew the bird was truly on the wing-the soul of Shakespeare Tom had taken flight.

"William Withington is his full name, I believe," said the doctor at my elbow with open notebook in hand.

I said "Yes." I knew not why, but with the flood of light that seemed to suddenly illumine that dead body and the attic, came conviction.

On my way home, pondering over that strange man, I fell in with Lambient. He stopped me.

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You remember that consistent, curious fool Withington, I told you of ?"

EARLY this year, in the February number of this Review, I ventured to draw attention, in an article entitled "England's Opportunity in China," to the magnitude and importance of our relations with that Empire, and I

indicated some of the more pressing reforms called for in her interests. The discussions in Parliament and the public press which have since taken place have shown no disposition to belittle the momentous character of our

interests in the East: on the contrary, the British public appear to me to have manifested a strong and nervous anxiety that their country should not only maintain her unquestioned supremacy in the commercial race, but should also adopt a definite line of policy strong and consistent enough to prevent her being forcibly elbowed aside by unscrupulous rivals. The inherent difficulty in the situation has been lack of precise information regarding China generally. We have British Consuls and Chinese Commissioners at the treaty ports, who issue annual reports on trade statistics; while at the capital, at Shanghai, and at a few minor places there are newspaper correspondents who send occasional items of information to the London press. But to the home public generally the geography, the economic condition, and the government of China are as yet quite unfamiliar, and it may be owing to this that our democratically governed country, feeling that its sources of information and knowledge of China are out of all proportion to its business interests therein, has been unable to indicate sufficiently clearly to the British Government the precise policy that would find most favor in our country.

It was to supplement this partial knowledge of China in my own case that I determined to visit the country and see things for myself at first hand. I wished not only to visit Shanghai, that wonderful emporium of foreign trade and microcosm of Western civilization, dumped down inside the entrance gate of the most conservative people in the world, but I was anxious to see the capital also (a more inaccessible and immeasurably more backward city), and I was also desirous to see something of the interior and less known but nevertheless important places in the north. I have conversed with many gentlemen, foreign and native, holding high and responsible positions under the Chinese Government, and have inspected the only railway and the principal coal mine in the country. The positive information I have collected is both suggestive and valuable; but, better than this, I have gradually been enabled to form a strong

opinion as to the political course that Great Britain ought to pursue in the troublous imbroglio in which affairs in the Far East are now involved.

It is impossible for an Englishman dealing with the subject of China, from his own country's point of view, to omit mention of Shanghai. In a sense it is doubtless, as I have already remarked, the threshold of the Chinese Empire; but in another sense it is outside of it, as the city is certainly more European than Chinese in its excellent municipal arrangements, its electric lighting, its handsome buildings, public gardens, band, and other amenities of civilization. Shanghai is, however, undergoing a revolution in business matters, which it behoves one to take note of, especially as it has been. foreshadowed in more than one recent Foreign Office Report. Foreign Office Report. I refer, in the first place, to the threatened gradual elimination of the British merchant. The old order of "hongs" is plainly changing, when merchants used to conduct a lucrative British trade with China, and when their spacious houses of business were both offices and residences (of the old-fashioned English type) for the manager and clerks. The first modification of this régime ensued from more frequent mails and the institution of the telegraph-an important change which called into being the commission agent. The conveniences of the new system caused rates to be cut finer, and drove the old merchants more and more into company and other business to enable them to maintain their position. But more powerful than this has been the development of the compradore system" to a pitch that has seriously affected the profits of those merchants, banks, and houses who have found themselves compelled to resort to it. For the benefit of the uninitiated it may be mentioned that "compradore" is a Portuguese word, and in the early days of European trade with China was applied to a functionary who was something between an interpreter and a steward, and to whom was committed the business of bargaining with the natives in smaller matters. smaller matters. By degrees, however, the compradore has made such good use of his linguistic advantage in being

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