THE NUN. YES! she is sad, depress'd and pale, That tells us hope has vanish'd now. Her hands are clasp'd in mute despair, It tells that o'er her gentle mind, The chilling blight of grief has pass'd, Where are her thoughts? Not on her beads, No! they are deeply fix'd on one, To whom her fondest vows were given, And, is it then Religion's voice Which sternly bids the Nun resign, Each loved, endearing, social tie, No! give it not that sacred name, To which a harsher one belongs; The holy cause so deeply wrongs. Ne'er bid us worldly joys forsake, August 10th. F. H. THE WAR WITH CHINA. BY THOMAS HOOD, ESQ. "Mistress of herself tho' China fall."-POPE. "I CAN'T understand it," said my uncle, throwing down on the table the pamphlet he had been reading, and looking up over the fireplace, at the great picture of Canton, painted by his elder brother, when he was mate of an East Indiaman. My aunt was seated beside my uncle, with her cotton-box, playing at working; and cousin Tom was working at playing, in a corner. As for my father and myself, we had dropped in as usual after a walk, to take our tea, which through an old connexion with Cathay, was certain to be firstrate at the cottage. "Why on earth," continued my uncle, uncle, "why on earth we should go to war about the Opium business quite passes my comprehension." "And mine too," chimed in my aunt, whose bent it was to put in a word and put out an argument, as often as she had an opportunity; "I always thought opium was a lulling, soothing sort of thing, more likely to compose people's passions than to stir them up." My uncle looked at the speaker with much the same expression as that of the great girl in Wilkie's picture, who is at once frowning and smiling at the boy's grotesque mockery of the Blind Fiddler-for my aunt's allusion to the sedative qualities of opium was amusing in itself, but provoking, as interrupting the discourse. "The Sulphur question," she continued, "is quite a different thing. That's all about brimstone and combustibles; and it would only be of a piece, if we were to send our men of war, and frigates, and fireships to bombard Mount Vesuvius." "I should like to see it," said my father, in his quietest tone, and with his gravest face, for he was laughing inwardly at the proposed Grand Display of Pyrotechnics! "To go back," resumed my uncle, "to the very beginning of the business; first, we have Captain Elliot, who wishes to give the Chinese admiral a chop-" "And a very civil thing of him too," remarked my aunt. "Eh!-what?" exploded my uncle, as snappishly as a Waterloo cracker. "To be sure," said my aunt, in a deprecating tone, "it might be a Friday and a fast day, as to meat”— "As to what?" "As to meat," repeated my aunt, resolutely. "I have always understood that the Catholic priests and the Jesuits were the first to go converting the Chinese." "Phoo! nonsense!" ejaculated my uncle. "A chop is a document." "Well, it's not my fault," retorted my aunt, "if things abroad are called by their wrong names. What is a chop, then, in Chinese-I mean a pork or mutton one-is it called a document ?" My uncle gave a look upwards, worthy of Job himself. He was sorely tempted-but he translated the rising English oath into a French shrug and grimace. My father tried to mend matters as usual. "After all, brother," he said, "my sister's mistake was natural, and womanlyespecially in a mistress of a house, who has to think occasionally of chops and steaks. Besides she has had greater blunderers to keep her in countenance-you remember the needless resentment there was about the 'Barbarian Eye.'" "To be sure he does," said my aunt, "and why should I be expected to know Chinese, any more than Lord Melbourne, or Lord Palmerston, or Lord-Knows-Who? especially when it's such a difficult language besides, and a single letter stands for a whole chapter, like the Egyptian hieroglyphics." "But what says the pamphleteer?" said my father, deliberately putting on his spectacles, and taking up the brochure from the table. "Why, he says," replied my uncle, "that opium is a baneful drug, that it produces the most demoralizing effects on the consumers; and that we have no right to go to war to force a noxious article down the throats of our fellow-creatures." "No, nor a wholesome one neither," returned my father, "as the judge said to the woman when she killed her child for not taking its physic. But what have we here-a return of our exports to the Celestial Empire ?" “The author means to imply," said my uncle, "that if the Chinese did not chew and smoke so much opium, they would have more money to lay out on our Birmingham and Manchester manufactures." "Pretty nonsense, indeed!" exclaimed my aunt. "As if the Chinese could smoke printed cottons and calicoes, and chew Brummagen hardware, and cutlery, like the ostriches!" "I believe it is but a Brummagen argument after all," said my father, "a mercantile interest plated over with morality. It's the old story in the spelling-book- There's nothing like leather. The pamphleteer and Commissioner Lin are both of a mind in condemning a drug in which they are not druggists; but how comes it that the deleterious demoralizing effects of the article are found out only in 1840?—The opium trade with China is of long standing-it is as old as-" "Robinson Crusoe," cried a small voice from the corner of the room, where Cousin Tom had been listening to the discourse and making a paper kite at the same time. "Robinson Fiddlesticks!" cried my aunt, "boys oughtn't to talk about politics. What in the world has opium-chewing to do with a desert island?" "He had a whole cargo of it," muttered Tom, "when he went on his voyage to China." "The lad's right," said my father. "Go, Tom, and fetch the book,"and Defoe's novel was produced in a twinkling! "The lad's right," repeated my father, reading aloud from the book,-"here's the very passage. From Sumatra, says Crusoe, we went to Siam, where we exchanged some of our wares for opium and some arrack-the first a commodity which bears a great price amongst the Chinese, and which at that time was much wanted there.'" "That's to the point, at any rate," said my uncle, with a nod of approbation to the boy. But my aunt did not so much relish Tom's victory, and on some household pretence, took herself out of the room. "It is a sad job, this war, and I am sorry for it," said my father, with a serious shake of his head. "I have always had a sneaking kindness for the Chinese, as an intelligent and ingenious people. We have out run them now in the race of civilization, but no doubt there was a time when comparatively they were refined and we were the barbarians." "It is impossible to doubt it," said my uncle with great animation. "To say nothing of their invention of gunpowder, and their discovery of the mariner's compass, look at their earthenware. For my own part, I am particularly fond of old china. It is, I may say, quite a passion -inherited perhaps from my grandmother, with several closets full of the antique oriental porcelain. She used to say it was a genteel taste." "And she had Horace Walpole," said my father, "to back her opinion." "To be sure she had," replied my uncle, eagerly; "and the Chinese must be a genteel people. It is sufficient to look at their elegant tea services, to convince one that they are not made any more than their vessels of the commoner earth. You feel at once-" "That Slang Whang is a gentleman," said my father, "and Nan King a lady, in spite of their names.” My uncle paid no attention to the joke, but went on in a strain to have delighted Father Matthew. "To look at a Chinese service," he said, "is enough of itself to make one a tea-totaller. It inspires oneat least it does me-with the Exquisite's horror of malt liquor and such gross beverages. Indeed, to compare our drinking-vessels with the Chinese, they are like horse-buckets to bird-glasses; and remembering their huge flagons, and black jacks, and wassail bowls, our Gothic and Saxon ancestors must have been a little coarse, not to say hoggish, in their draughts." "They must, indeed," said my father. "Now here is a delicate drinking-vessel," continued my uncle, taking up from a side-table a cup hardly large enough for a fairy to get into. "What sort of liquor ought one to expect from such a pretty little chalice ?" "At a guess,” replied my father, very gravely, "nothing coarser than mountain dew." "Yes," said my uncle, with enthusiasm, "to drink out of such a diminutive calyx, all enamelled with blossoms, is, indeed, like to the poetical fancy of sipping dew out of a flower! And then the Sylph to whom only such a cup could belong!” "She must have had thinner lips than an Austrian," said my father. "And what a ladylike hand!" exclaimed my uncle, "for such a Lilliputian utensil would escape from any but the most feminine fingers." "Her hand must be like her foot," said my father, "which is never bigger than a child's.” "And there, again, we have a proof of refinement," said my uncle. "Walking is generally considered in Europe as a vulgar and common exercise for a lady, and it shows the extreme delicacy of the well-bred Chinese female, that as far as possible she makes a conventional impropriety a physical impossibility." "And it is somewhat remarkable," said my father, "that the Chinese gentlemen have an appendage, formerly indispensable with the politest nation in the world in its politest time, the pigtail." "Exactly," said my uncle. "But here is the lady," and he took up another of his grandmother's brittle legacies, "on a plate that ought to be a plate to Moore's Paradise and the Peri, Just hold it up towards the window, and observe its transparency, softening down the sunshine you observe to a sort of moonlight.' "Very transparent, indeed," said my father, "and yonder is Nan King herself, fetching a walk by that blue river." 66 "Yes, bluer than the Rhine," said my uncle, though it has not been put into poetry. And look at the birds, and fruits, and flowers! And then that pretty rural temple!" "Is it on the earth or in the sky ?" asked my father. "Whichever you please," said my uncle, "and the garden is all the more Edenlike for that ingenious equivocation. There is no horizon you observe, but a sort of blending, as we may suppose there was in paradise, of earth and heaven." "Very poetical indeed," said my father. "And those curly-tailed swallows, and those crooked gudgeons may be flying or swimming at the option of the spectator." "Exactly so," said my uncle; "and there you have the superior fancy of the Chinese. A Staffordshire potter would leave nothing to the imagination. He would never dream of building a castle in the air, or throwing a bridge over nothing." "He would not, indeed," said of parliament for it." my father, " even if he could get an act "Not he,” cried my uncle. "All must be fact with him-no fiction. But it is otherwise with the Chinese. They have been called servile and literal copyists-but, on the contrary, they have more boldness and originality than all our Royal Academy put together. For instance, here is a road, the further end of which is lost in that white blank which may or may not stand for the atmosphere-" "And yet," said my father, "that little man in petticoats is walking up it, as if he had an errand at the other end." "For aught we know," said my uncle, "it may be an allegory-and I have often fancied that the paintings on their vessels were scenes from their tales or poems. In the mean time we may gather some hints of the character of the people from their porcelain-that they are literary and musical, and from the frequent occurrence of figures of children, that they are of affectionate and domestic habits. And, above all, that they are eminently unwarlike, and inclined only to peaceful and pastoral pursuits. I do not recollect ever seeing an armed figure, weapons, or any allusion to war, and its attributes, in any of their enamels." "So much the worse for them," said my father; "for they are threatened with something more than a tempest in a teapot. It will be like the china vessel in the old fable, coming in contact with the brazen one. There will be a fine smash, brother, of your favourite ware!" "A smash! where?" inquired my aunt, who had just entered the room, and imperfectly overheard the last sentence. "What are you talking of?" "Of a Bull in a China Shop," said my father, with a hard wink at my uncle. "There "Yes; that's a dreadful smash, sure enough," said my aunt. was Mrs. Starkey, who keeps the great Staffordshire warehouse at Smithfield Bars-she had an overdriven beast run into her shop only last week. At first, she says, he was quiet enough, for besides racing up and down St. John-street, he had been bullock-hunted all over Islington, and |