ds bitterly denouncing the policy of the government, and
calling upon all good subjects to rise up against such unpatriotic
leaders.

When Li-wang-chang, who enjoys great popularity in his province, was en
route for Chefoo to negotiate with Sir Thomas Wade, the people of
Tien-tsin made the most determined efforts to prevent him from going
further. For a time he was literally besieged in his own _yamen_, and it
was only by the publication of a proclamation warning the people that
they were guilty of rebellion against the emperor when they hindered the
progress of his representatives, that the opposition was withdrawn.

Sir Thomas deserves the highest praise for going just far enough and no
further in his demands. Yet the last mail from China brings the news
that the foreign residents there are intensely dissatisfied with the
result of the settlement. This was to be expected. Any settlement short
of one effected by war would have met the disapproval of these gentry.
The interests of the Chinese and the foreign merchants are too
antagonistic to admit of impartial judgment on questions of this sort.
England, in their opinion, could gain greater concessions by war than by
negotiations--ergo, they would have all such troubles settled by "blood
and iron."

The London "Times" puts it very well when it says:

"Those Englishmen who reside in the treaty ports are not impartial
judges of the concessions. Too often they go to Canton or Shanghai in a
frame of mind that would exasperate a much less vain people than the
Chinese. They sometimes talk as if they thought it a mere impertinence
on the part of an inferior race to have a pride of its own, and they act
as if the chief end of the Chinese were to minister to the demands of
British trade."

WALTER A. BURLINGAME.

THE LETTERS OF HONORE DE BALZAC.

The first feeling of the reader of the two volumes which have lately
been published under the foregoing title is that he has almost done
wrong to read them. He reproaches himself with having taken a shabby
advantage of a person who is unable to defend himself. He feels as one
who has broken open a cabinet or rummaged an old desk. The contents of
Balzac's letters are so private, so personal, so exclusively his own
affairs and those of no one else, that the generous critic constantly
lays them down with a sort of dismay, and asks himself in virtue of what
peculiar privilege, or what newly discovered