aps I may go direct from
Shanghae to Japan, and so home. It is almost too good a prospect to be
realised.

[Sidenote: Home news.]

_February 27th_.--I had Reed to dine with me yesterday. He is off this
morning to Manila, _en route_ for Shanghae. The Russian returns on
Monday, and we are going to Shanghae by the same route most
fraternally.... Your accounts of the boys make me feel as if I had
been an age away from home. God grant that I may get through this
business soon, and return to find you all flourishing!

_March 1st_.--I received your letters yesterday.... How I wish that I
had joined that merry dance on Christmas Day at Dunmore, and seen B.
and R. performing their reel steps, and F.[2] snapping his fingers!
You knew now how differently my New Year was passed--traversing that
vast city of the dead--meditating over that 28th December which Herod
had already hallowed.... These letters are my conscience and memory,
the only record I keep of passing emotions and events.... Depend upon
it the true doctrine is one I have before propounded to you: Do
nothing with which your own conscience can reproach you; _nothing_ in
its largest sense; _nothing_, including _omission_ as well as
_commission_; not nothing only in the meaning of having done no ill,
but nothing also in the meaning of having omitted no opportunity of
doing good. You are then _well with yourself_. If it is worth while to
be well _with others_--SUCCEED.

[Sidenote: Swatow.]

_H.M.S. 'Furious,' Swatow.--March 5th_.--I am again on the wide
ocean, though for the moment at anchor.... The settlement here is
against treaty. It consists mainly of agents of the two great opium-
houses, Dent and Jardine, with their hangers-on. This, with a
considerable business in the coolie trade--which consists in
kidnapping wretched coolies, putting them on board ships where all the
horrors of the slave-trade are reproduced, and sending them on
specious promises to such places as Cuba--is the chief business of the
'foreign' merchants at Swatow. Swatow itself is a small town some
miles up the river. I can only distinguish it by the great fleet of
junks lying off it. The place where the foreigners live is a little
island, barren, but nicely situated at the mouth of the river. A
number of Chinese are resorting to it, and putting up rather go