Various - Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 стр 3.

We do not need to inform the reader, that conventual establishments are not now so thin-sown in England as they were a few years ago, or that they occasionally draw into their circle individuals who started in life with very different prospects before them. The whole subject is one worthy of some inquiry, as a feature of our social state, by no means devoid of political importance; and it is for this very reason that we draw attention to the subject. Instead of contemptuously ignoring such things,

let them, we say, be made known and investigated in a calm and philosophical spirit. It is for want of a steady comprehension of facts of the kind here adverted to, that an illusion is kept up respecting our existing social condition. It is heedlessly said, and every one repeats the error, that the age is a hard, mechanical one, which shines only in splendid materialities; but is it compatible with this notion, that there is ten times more earnest religious feeling of one kind and another than there was thirty years ago; that antiquities, mediæval literature and architecture, are studied with a zeal hitherto unknown; and that such mystical writers as Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning, carry off the palm from all the calm-blooded old-school men of letters? We rather think it is the most romantic, supra-material age that has yet been seen. The resurrection of conventual life, in some instances Catholic, in others Protestant, appears to us as one of the facts of this unexpected reaction, which doubtless will run its course, and then give place to something else, though not, we trust, till out of its commixture of good and evil some novelty hopeful for humanity has sprung.

THE LATE EMPEROR OF CHINA

Referring first to the personal history of Taou-Kwang, we find that his education was more Tatar than Chinese. He was one of the numerous grandchildren of the imperial house of Keelung, but without any expectation of filling the throne, as both his mother and paternal grandmother were inferior members of the imperial harem. The discipline under which the royal family was trained, was of the strictest kind. Each of the male children, on completing his sixth year, was placed with the rest under a course of education superintended by the state. Though eminent doctors were engaged to instruct them in Chinese literature, yet archery and horsemanship were considered higher accomplishments, and the most expert masters from Mongolia and Manchooria trained them in these exercises. They were treated as mere schoolboys, were allotted a very small income for their maintenance, were closely confined to the apartments assigned to them, kept in entire ignorance of passing events, and allowed little intercourse with the courtnone with the people. Not till each had passed his twentieth year, was there any relaxation of this discipline. Taou-Kwang was about this age when his father ascended the throne, in consequence of the somewhat capricious appointment of Keelung, who abdicated, and soon after died. The new emperor surrounded himself with buffoons, playactors, and boon-companions. The debaucheries, jealousies, and cruelties of his reign, remind us of what we have half sceptically read of Nero and Caligula. But Taou-Kwang kept aloof alike from the frivolities and the intrigues of his father's court: he seemed to have no desire ungratified so long as he had his bow and arrows, his horse and matchlock; and even after he was unexpectedly nominated heir to the throne, in consequence of having personally defended his father from a band of assassins, his new expectations made no difference in his frugal and modest way of life. The emperor at length died; it did not clearly appear by what means, and it would perhaps have been troublesome to inquire: the empress-dowager waived the claims of her son; and Taou-Kwang ascended the throne without bloodshed. The luxury of the preceding reign now gave place to sobriety and economy; though the usual ceremonies of the court were strictly observed, they were conducted in the least expensive manner; and the ruling passion of the monarch soon appeared to be avarice.

Taou-Kwang had no taste either for literature or the arts; and he jumbled together in one large magazine the beautiful pictures, clocks, and musical instruments

accumulated by his ancestors. To explain and repair these, there had always been Europeans, chiefly Portuguese, in attendance; and to some of these we have been indebted in times past for memoirs of the court of Peking; but Taou-Kwang dismissed the last of them. It is believed that an undefined dread of Western power had much to do with this distaste for the products of its ingenuity.

The only orgies which the emperor seemed desirous of maintaining, were feasts for the promotion of Manchoo union; on which occasions, the Manchoos assembled to eat meat without ricein order to maintain the recollection of their Nimrodic originand to drink an intoxicating liquor made of mare's milk. He had a favourite sequestered abode at no great distance from the capital, where he had allowed the vegetation to run wild and rank, in order to make it a rural retreat, instead of an imperial park. All business was excluded from the precincts, and here the emperor spent much of his time, wandering solitarily on foot among the trees, amusing himself with the friends of his youth, or sailing, with some of the ladies of his family, along the mimic rivers.