comprehend the mania for funerals which exists at San Francisco except it be, as some have surmised, that an accurate, full, true and particular account may be forwarded to the sorrowing friends in the Emerald Isle, of the glorious end to which Teddy had come at last, which frequently forms the subject of a newspaper paragraph. On a certain occasion, the intelligence conveyed to a sorrowing father of the death by hanging of an Irish criminal, his son, was as follows:-"He was addressing a public meeting from a temporary platform, when a portion of the structure suddenly gave way, and he broke his neck!"

I saw two funerals of persons by no means elevated or distinguished, one had a hundred and the other about a hundred and fifty pair-horse carriages. This is almost always the case when the deceased belongs to any association, or political party. Every one being anxious to attend the funeral in order that when his turn comes he may have a long procession also. There is common sense in the arrangement, for no one thinks of putting on mourning; but men, women and children, all in gay clothing, crowd by the half dozen into the vehicles, call for "drinks" from the carriage doors at the public houses, and behave generally very much as if they were going out for a little pleasant excursion. There will thus be several hundred persons gathered together, and solemnity is out of the question. The burial service cannot at all be heard or joined in, and drunken excesses are not unfrequently its accompaniment. These long processions are a great interruption to the traffic; all the cars and other carriages having to stop until it has passed. No one approves them, except the cab proprietors who get five dollars for each carriage, which upon one or two hundred is worth having; and besides this all the old lame horses get an airing. The law thus favours the procession, and the funeral folly gets a further impetus from the protection afforded to the possession of a burial place. The cemetery is a magnificent piece of land which was purchased by share subscription. Each wealthy merchant subscribed, and thus prepared his tomb beforehand. Upon many of these forty or fifty thousand dollars have been expended. The owner has in some cases become a bankrupt; his tomb would sell for what it cost, but his creditors cannot touch it. It is the safest kind of property imaginable; better even than being "seized in Fee," I should think, and the consequence has been that a great disposition has been shown to prepare for death in this way. One tomb belonging to a jeweller and watchmaker in the place might have been intended as a depository for the Kohinoor diamond. It appears to be built of the finest marble, with fireproof doors, like a Chubb's Safe. Some one has addressed to the Great Healer the following effusion:

Pain was my portion; Physic was my food,

Groans were my devotions; Drugs did me no good,
Christ was my Physician; knew what was the best;
Took me to his possession; and to eternal rest.

The most imposing monument on the whole is that raised to the memory of Mr. Broderick, Member of the Senate for the State of California, who was killed in a duel in 1859, originating in a political quarrel with Duke Gwynn. The quarrel was taken up by Mr Young a friend of Gwynn's, by whose hand Broderick fell. Such was the state of political and other influences that Gwynn was acquitted by the Jury. The monument is a plain four-sided column, upon the sides of which, at the bottom, is prominently inscribed "BRODERICK, MECHANIC, SENATOR." This pride of having risen and made progress in the world, which is so essentially American, may teach our English vanity a lesson. No doubt the circumstances of the two nations are perfectly dissimilar. Each member is proud of those conditions in his own person which are thought much of by the community of which he forms a part, there is something suggested in this which we may both learn and unlearn.

We went to hear the Rev. Dr. Hadsworth whose preaching is original and suggestive, who occasionally indulges in little quaintnesses, and piquancies. On this occasion, he was illustrating the providence of God as shown in the unerring order of cause and effect. "If young ladies will walk out with stiltheel boots and rose leaf bonnets, they must not be astonished if they fall down stairs or get a sun stroke." The previous Sunday was a thanksgiving ordered by the Governor, and in an enumeration of blessings which had been received were mentioned "Our fields have brought forth abundantly, ourselves and our children are generally in health; our wives as wives go are very obedient," and so on. Again, speaking of the miracle of feeding the 5,000, from the text "give ye them to eat," and of the apostle proceeding to divide the first loaf, he said "I'll be bound he broke it into very little pieces."

The Jewish Synagogue is said to have cost half a million of dollars! All the churches are provided with beautiful organs, and a great effort seems to be made to produce elaborate, difficult and sensational solo music. It has nothing of solemnity about it and no one thinks of joining in it outside the choir. This is a great pity, for nothing equals the effect produced by the singing of a whole congregation. There is a great prejudice in America against amateur musical performances. Some persons who may be proficient at the instrument would be afraid to sit down to the piano, for instance, lest it should be supposed at once that they gave lessons, or, at all events, that they were good for nothing else. There used to be something of the same ignorant feeling in England, originating doubtless in the fact that so few then were at all proficient in music, and a sort of consolation was found in this feeling. We will hope that it is different now; and that the rising youth will be taught that knowledge is power, and that every accomplishment may be made a means of usefulness.

ANAMESE SCHOLAR.

One of those questions among ethnologists which there is little hope of ever settling is, the degrees of intellectual cultivation, of which the various races of mankind are susceptible. The negro, by some of our best authorities, is held to be the most unimprovable of all,-that the intellectual part of his cranium goes on expanding and improving, until he has nearly reached manhood, when the animal portion developes rapidly and finally gains the ascendency, giving rise to that type of character which has made the negro the easy dupe and slave of more favoured nations, from the time when the fact was recorded in Assyrian bas-relief up to the present day. Some go to the other extreme, and affirm that the white, or European section of the Caucasian race, is suceptible of a much higher degree of intellectual cultivation than any of the coloured races even of Asia and India, I believe, too, that Crawford and other modern ethnologists have done a good deal towards classifying the races according to complexion, making a kind of intellectual pyramid whose apex is the European, and base the negro, who has been content to dwell in darkness form the beginning, and who might as well try to change the colour of his skin as to become a highly intellectual creature. Climate has also figured extensively in Ethnological Statistics, and it has doubtless been proved that the intellect evaporates in a given ratio, according to Geographical position and temperature; hence the majority of Europeans who leave the coldest latitudes for the tropics, only remain long enough to evaporate their spare intellect, which crystallises in dollars, with which they return home. Were they to become permanent settlers, such as the Dutch are threatening to become in Java and along the Sumatra coast, it might be reasonably expected, assuming that climate has so powerful an effect, that the lassitude and apathy, induced by heat, would, in a few generations, bring the exotics down to the level of the aboriginal natives. It is not, however, the business of this paper to enter upon a difficult ethnological question, but rather to show what has been successfully accomplished in cultivating the mind of the modern Asiatic. In the island of Penang, the French have established a college for the education of Malays and Cochin Chinese, who, when fitted for the task, are sent back among their own race as Missionaries and teachers.

During a short residence in Cochin China, it was my good fortune to make the acquaintance of one or two natives who had been educated at Penang, and I shall never forget the surprise I experienced when introduced to Petruske, the subject of the illustration. He addressed me in as pure English as he would have used if he had been educated at Oxford, having just the slightest French accent to denote that he was a foreigner, while he conversed in French with the ease and purity of an educated Parisian. He is equally at home in

writing and conversing in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, while his scholarly knowledge of his own language, has obtained for him the post of professor in the "College des Interprètes" of Saigon. While he has cultivated successfully the European tongues, he has not neglected those of eastern Asia. On one occasion when I visited his house, I found him seated in his study, engaged on a work that has cost him years of labour, "A Comparative Analysis of the Languages of the World." He was surrounded by a litter of books, some of which he had collected in Europe when travelling there, others, such as those in Sanscrit, Pali, and Chinese, he had obtained from friends in various parts of the east. During the evening one of the Cholon Missionaries joined us, and when I left, he had engaged Petruske in a Theological discussion in Latin.

The photograph represents him, surrounded by a group of his French and Anamese pupils, instructing them in the varied intonations of monosyllabic words, which forms one of the most difficult features in the spoken language of the Anamese. For their further guidance, he has published an Anamite Grammar, which begins by tracing the affinity between the ancient symbolical characters and those of the modern written language of Anam.

HUMOUROUS PERIODICALS.

J. T.

In all countries and in all ages, power and civilization regulating things proportionately, journals of 'Wit and Humour,' books of harmless satire, and unblushing jesters have had their run.

In the reign of Henry VIII and during the Reformation, when men's minds were engrossed by joint affairs of Church and State; while Martin Luther was busily employed in thundering against the abuses of Popery; while Wolsey was fluttering betwixt prime favoritism and utter degradation, the age allowed itself the indulgence of a work of satire-the well known 'Shippe of Fooles' was lauched into the troubled waters, without so much as a mast or sail to carry her to the Port of Favour.'

Before the reign of Henry II, there were but few shafts of Humour permitted, indeed the liberty of the subject' then included no literary license, and such bon-mots as bore any allusion to statesmen or 'men in office' were as bitterly resented as occasion or their meaning required. Thus then the victim of humour who many years afterwards penned the distich :—

'A rat-a cat, and lovel our dog'

'Will rule all England under a hog

suffered the extreme penalty of the law for his implied allusion to the crest of England. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder that our humourous lore dates back but a few years.

For the sake, perhaps, of common sense, it better so, for judging from the downward steps of fifty years, and calculating even a deeper rut in fifty more, our Charivaris would in time form a miserable embodiment of most extravagant nonsense. The first journal of humour, at least to English tastes, published in the heart of a city like London, surrounded by men of reputed wit, offers even under all these advantages but a poor return for the cost of purchase! Another year brings another crop, and thus the sower and the reaper have each an equal share of labour, but the outside world gain less than nothing by the dangerous advance on the stage of worn out reason. A town, even a large community at a watering place, or a soldier's camp, without a Charivari' is, in these days, quite the exception.

Men are not content with other peoples' nonsense, but they must have a finger in the pie themselves. The result is painful to the author, as being a cause of much worry, and by no means satisfactory to other people! It barely lives long enough to be generally known-and very seldom pays its way. In the face of all this, young men, whose attentions might often have been directed elsewhere to advantage-rush off to the printer with a roll of manuscript, a rough design for a 'frontispiece' and a firm conviction that the truck requires but a fair start to journey down the slope; they are not unreasonable in this supposition, but their ideas of travelling, and the notions of other people, are, in this instance, utterly at variance with each other, while the slope referred to, bears a close resemblance to the high road taken even by leading journals of Humour in all parts of Europe.

The Journal of Satires' which claims the definite article prefixed, is in some measure apart from the general run, yet the tone adopted is near akin to impertinence.

In past ages the 'Tomahawk' would have lived a day longer than its Editor, and he, several hours less than the most sickly flower girl-but in the nineteenth century, the longest-lived are the boldest men, and the most impertinent, undoubtedly those most feared.

We allow a great deal of absurdity to enter our houses in the form of letter-press without making any greater objection than would be made by a donkey tied to a post with a rotten straw, sensible of the fact that it requires but a kick to break from bondage-yet this knowledge often deters us from taking the necessary step, and we still remain tied to the tree, within range of mud pellets and impudent street boys, making wry faces and venting fruitless oaths.

TOM BOWLINE.