taken among the factious, has come forth, in the front of the cold shoulder given him, with an address, according to his usual phraseology when out of place, about reform and "all that sort of thing,"-a tub flung out to a whale, as all the world sees. When in with the court, as we have already stated so clearly after Lord Brougham, we heard little of reform from the noble lord. Some plead the noble lord's services in 1832, and will again untruly ascribe the Reform Bill to him in place of Earl Grey, because he introduced it into the Commons. Lord Grey, in or out of place, for forty years stood by a reform in parliament, and contemplated a much fuller measure of reform than suited Lord John and some of his friends, by whom it was cut and clipped to obtain their suffrages-that bill which Lord John, in a moment perhaps of too much candour, pronounced a "finality." Ever, when premier, cold, formal, contented, marvellously pleased with things as he finds them, and ready then to let "well" alone; out of place, reform ever on his lips, the charm of the noble lord's popularity, the talisman of restored power. There lies the difference between his lordship when in sound political health and in political indisposition, recalling the old couplet:

The devil was ill, the devil a monk would be ;

The devil was well, the devil a monk was he!

Now, we are not inclined to see Lord Palmerston made a sacrifice in this way to factious hopes of any kind. Let the minister have fair play, and not be handed over to shipwreck, for the gratification of collective factions, the moment he has completed the task assigned him by the British people. Let the people of England, who teach other nations how to live, teach such malcontents at their own doors that they have both the will and the power to do justice to the services of a minister as well as to those of the humblest subject.

Into the merits of the Canton question, about which all are unanimous, except those who hope to profit by the reverse, we shall not go. The question has been discussed by the press and the public, and the aggregate weight is in favour of the government. Every one who has lived in the East, all who have only visited it, those who have studied the character of the Chinese by documentary testimony-all, in short, who do not keep one eye shut in regard to the outbreak there-are of one opinion on the matter, and that opinion unfavourable to the Tartar saint, very little in the way of consenting to his canonisation, although headless Englishmen and poisoned bowls speak his merits loudly. The submission to the smallest insult the Chinese regard as the result of pusillanimity, while they never miss an opportunity of inflicting insult when unresented-perhaps we should rather say the Tartar officials, for the people of Chinese blood are generally quiet and harmless. Every foreigner is treated by the mandarins, or official men, with contempt as a barbarian. If the owner of the Hong-Kong vessel was an English colonial resident, he had a right to protection under the British flag-to protection, in every possible manner, back to his home if his license had expired. The Opposition lawyers say such persons should have documents of naturalisation. They argue as if the British dominions were withinside the inns of court, as if the mother country in Europe transmitted its ancient customs, laws, and high modern civilisation to countries inhabited by savages, and used them as a rule of intercourse with nations of most dissimilar habits, or semi-civilised. Letters of naturalisation to a hundred millions of East Indians, to

Time was

the Cape Hottentots, to New Zealanders, and Australians! Only let us fancy such a thing. The idea is worthy the denizen of an inn of court. The British flag that has "braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze,” is the true protection of every man, native or foreign, who sails under its shadow, and will be so, we trust, for a thousand years more. when every flag in the narrow seas was lowered to us, and though we do not in more enlightened times justify such a usurpation of power, that flag must still protect our own men, natives or colonists, and foreigners too, unless the last be demanded in the form prescribed by mutual treaties. In dealing with barbarians, mistakes, which could be explained between civilised nations and overlooked, must not be overlooked with them. They must not be suffered to haul down the British flag, or trample a British deck for a wanton purpose. That flag must protect from violence the crew of every nation that sails under it; that flag must hallow the deck as it hallows its own freeborn soil; on every sea, in every port, under the glare of noon or in the still midnight darkness, amid the icy mountains of the Polar Ocean, or under the burning line-in all it must protect its own, and shield the stranger until superior authority decide regarding him. Barbarians are to learn civilisation from the civilised, not to become their instructors. If they will not learn, they must pay for it by experience. The mutation of any people in a state of barbarism in our time is a change towards civilisation, not towards augmented barbarism. In the course of such a change the equitable agent is the power which enforces its demands, and exhibits an example, which by being copied may impart ameliorating usages to untutored races, impracticable to be any other way inculcated. Our firmness is instruction, our strictness in demanding an adherence to simple agreements to the very letter is the training to further advancement. Nothing was more injurious in the Canton relations with England than the submission to the non-fulfilment by that district alone of the treaty last made with the Chinese government. We now see the effect of our mistaken conduct.

As the amusement of the masquerade is over when people show their faces, so the confederacy against Lord Palmerston's administration being unmasked, has lost all but the darkness of its complexion. It no longer diverts and misrepresents, but appeals to its motley supporters to obtain it grace in the sight of the people. The dissolution of parliament is awkward for the Opposition. In all parts of the country indignation is expressed, that while the measures of a successful and fair administration were consolidating, their progress should be interrupted by faction, and a pretended care for the public welfare, called a saving patriotism by some-patriotism in wax, to be moulded into the form most agreeable to party selfishness. From the state of the public mind, Lord Derby will take little by what has occurred. The English people are just and generous in the main, and cannot but penetrate into the motives which have brought about the present state of things.

The displacement of Lord Palmerston would be a public calamity. On the Continent this is felt to be the case as well as at home. If, however, he has guided the state vessel with Lord Derby's crew in the Lower House-if with such an example of the lack of public confidence his own parliament looks the last noble lord so full in the face-the aspect of a new parliament cannot well be contemplated as meeting his aspirations for entering the Treasury once more.

If London throw out Lord John Russell-and the citizens threaten it, -if Mr. Cobden leave the West Riding of York, as it is asserted he will do, and we know not how many more representatives are threatened to be displaced, we shall see Lord Palmerston unshackled, with a parliament of his own. We shall see the leaders in the Upper House, and in the Lower-"tel maître tel valet!"-compelled to return to their old work again without driving the successful minister from his post, or obtaining the guidance of the machine which they were incapable of getting into working order, not being able to steal Lord Palmerston's clothes, as Mr. Disraeli would phrase it. This may increase the ferocity of the aspirant parties, and quicken Mr. Disraeli's pointed periods,-even now losing effect from their commonness, but by no means convince the people of England that their state affairs cannot be most effectively and honestly conducted without the eloquence of the head of the house of Stanley, or the screaming sarcasms from under the many-coloured coat of Mr. Disraeli.

A SWEDISH VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD IN THE YEARS 1851, 1852, 1853.

TRANSLATED BY MRS. BUSHBY.

San Francisco, July, 1852.

WE sailed from Honululu on the 3rd of July, but it was long before the American coast in the vicinity of San Francisco became visible to us. At length the high, rocky shore rose, as it were, out of the fog, which, like a heavy white drapery, had enveloped it, and before us stood that far-famed entrance, which is rightly called the "Golden Gate." For beyond that port what rich treasures do not those valleys contain, glittering through, or swept along by the rushing streams, sparkling on the surface or embedded in the soil. What a vast site whence to obtain the means for that circulation needed to increase the commerce and the wealth of the world! What stirring life, what plans and calculations, what industry and what vice! Passing through the straits, of about two English miles in breadth, and three in length, we reached that harbour which, stretching about seventyfive miles from north to south, might form a reservoir for all the fleets in the world, and anchored off Sancelito, a little colony about an hour's sail from San Francisco, and to the north of the creek called the "Whaler's Harbour." Close to us lay the hilly land, its mountains bare of vegetation, and yellow from the action of the burning sun, with deep valleys between them, in the openings of which stood, here and there, a dwellinghouse, apparently impromptu erections, as everything undertaken by the hand of man appears to be in California. On the other side stretched the spacious harbour, pretty equally divided by small straits into three coves, enclosed by rough shores, covered with hills of several thousand feet in height, generally veiled by an impenetrable haze, or a thick fog, and filled with several islands, some laden with low brushwood, others almost barren, and guano-white from the millions of birds who dwell on them, protected from the violent blasts that have here free scope to distress at times un

fortunate navigators. Towards the south, beyond a jutting tongue of land, and between two hills that tower over the low coast, are to be seen the white houses of that San Francisco, whose name stands printed with golden letters in the dreams of so many persons; where a new paradise is thought to have been discovered, and which has proved the grave of so many smiling hopes, and is still, and will long remain an arena for the display of the wildest passions. The frigate remained for eight days at Sancelito, as it required some repairs, but you may believe it was not long before we visited San Francisco. Would that I had the power to give you a sufficiently vivid description of this receptacle of European luxury and misery, of riches and poverty, prosperity and despair, of vain exertions, and of momentary or chance successes.

In order to visit California, and still more to judge of it, one must encourage a peculiar frame of mind; avoid all comparisons with other places and people, and emancipate one's self from all ideas of social order and conventional manners. One wanders here amidst sheer illusions and the frail erections of a moment. The magnificence and beauty which seems to dazzle the beholder, hide but emptiness and wretchedness; the solid, or that which presents itself as such, sinks into nothing upon the smallest investigation. San Francisco is an enormous humbug a caricature of greatness, a mockery of prosperity. It makes one's heart ache to see so much depravity, so much misery. I should think no other spot in the world presents such various objects to awaken curiosity and serious reflection as this place, where so many are bewitched and lulled into pleasing dreams, so many pursue the phantom of enjoyment, and the phantom of fortune.

Here stands a town, with from seventy to eighty thousand inhabitants, apparently glittering in commercial riches and golden splendour, enclosing within its enchanted palaces fabulous wealth, and offering all that industry and ingenuity can collect of what is costly and refined from all parts of the world; hither pour in streams, like surging waves, the population of Europe, Asia, and America; and this city, containing so many things, so many people, is but the creation of six years! Three years ago there was nothing here but a row of tents; fire consumed the newly-erected dwellings, and ashes strewed the city of a year; but, like a phoenix, it has arisen and spread forth its mighty wings, until it has become this great metropolis of vainglory, this Eldorado of the New

World.

San Francisco lies, in shape like an amphitheatre, between two high, wooded hills, that stretch out towards the sea upon a slanting, sandy strip of land, which terminates, further out, in a line of quicksand. The upper part of the town rests, as it were, against these hills, while the other part is built upon stakes, or upon the wrecks of ships in the sea itself, which even rushes into the empty spaces in the lower streets. The whole of the lower part of the town is built only upon rubbish, thrown hurriedly among the stakes, and upon which, also, several handsome stone houses have, from time to time, been erected-houses that, having a foundation so far from solid, often fall in the course of a few months. There are no streets here, only bridges, which, carelessly erected at first, are full of holes and broken planks, as dangerous to man and beast as ugly to behold. Four or five of these bridges lead out towards the sea, and are called "wharfs." In the vicinity of these lie innumerable ships,

and a mass of steam-boats of every possible kind, from the stately clipper ship to the tiny little sloop-visitors from all parts of the world, from which a perfect forest of many-coloured flags are to be seen waving in the wind.

Hauled up among the houses in this part of the town are here and there to be met with the hulk of an old vessel-the only thing ancient where all else is new-converted into a "storeship," or magazine for all sorts of goods. It would seem that the proprietors of these goods consider them to be safer in such strange receptacles than in warehouses in the interior of the town, on account of the great risk and frequency of fires. It often happens that the owner of such merchandise leaves it to betake himself to the gold mines, where, dying unknown, his unclaimed property is sold off by auction, for the benefit of the person who had it in charge. The streets in the better part of the town are wide, and cross. each other at right angles; they are either sandy, like the roads, or covered with planks placed crossways, like the bridges, but never paved or laid with stones. The houses in these streets are most grotesque in their odd variety. Now one sees a small, wooden tenement of one or two stories, next to it a handsome brick mansion, in the English style; then comes a large, iron house, like a gigantic beehive; but all these houses, whether of wood, stone, canvas, or iron, are every one devoted to the same purpose-they are all stores or shops. In strolling even through the principal streets, one's eye is fatigued with the vast numbers of placards and signboards, which abound here on an unprecedented scale. The walls, the roofs, nay, from the very chimney-tops down to the foundation, the houses are covered with flags, printed announcements, and absurd paintings, descriptive of the trades or occupations, and names of the inhabitants. And what profusion of wares in the interiors! Yonder lie heaps of jewels, and gold worked into the finest forms; close by, the same valuable metal in massive lumps. Here, one is attracted by the scent of the most delicate perfumery; there, clothes of every description, from the most fashionable and elegant to the coarsest and most homely, invite the attention of purchasers. And these are plentiful in a country where washing is so enormously expensive, that ship-loads of soiled linen are sent to China or to the Sandwich Islands, to be washed and returned clean; and where repairs of all kinds cost so much, that it is quite as cheap to buy a pair of new shoes as to have an old pair mended. Nor is this peculiar to shoes; it extends to all articles of clothing.

Other streets are full of restaurants, and of tents where refreshments are taken standing. One hears everywhere the racket of billiard-balls and the noise of skittle-grounds, and on all sides the shrill "This way, gentlemen!" of the auctioneer, who is selling goods to the highest bidder. If to all this be added the gambling-houses, which flourish in frightful numbers in all the streets, from which issue, mingling with the tones of music from very tolerable orchestras, the sounds of the rattling of dice, the chinking of gold and silver pieces, the croupier's exhortation to 66 make your game, gentlemen!" and the wild laughter or deep curses of the players, the glare of light, the crowd, the agitation, the noise around, -if you can fancy all this, you will have some idea of the ferment, the chaos, the roguery that prevail here, and the spirit of speculation that meets one at every turn.