worth Lord George Bentinck's consideration, whenever, his present race being over, the kind stars permit him to exchange the corrupt atmosphere, tricks, and politics of St. Stephen's for the freshaired downs of Newmarket, where, says Mr. Bracy Clarke, in his luminous Podopthora, "wealth, learning often, and horses, do go hand-in-hand," Note also this wrinkle for fox-hunters :-never, when the season is over, let the horses' feet remain cramped up in short hunting-shoes, but house of lords. These corns, white in the feet of noblemen, are, it may be remarked, red in those of horses, being the result of lacerated inflamed blood-vessels; for what is called a "corn," being in fact a bruise, is produced by pressure from the heels of the coffin-bone, which itself suffers from loss of expansive power in the hoof, since Nature, who abhors sinecures worse than Joseph Hume, never continues the same measure of effective reparation to structures which are not employed, that she does to those constantly occupied in their allot-relieve them by longer ones, just as the rider exted tasks. changes his top-boots for slippers: an easy shoeblessings on the man who invented it-comforts a groggy, overhunted horse as much as it does a gouty, overhaunched mayor. The corn in the horse as well as his master arises from tight shoes, and the crying evil is best remedied by taking them off, and letting the patient stand all day on wet sawdust in a loose box; Mr. Miles, duly estimating the advantages of this answers every purpose of turning him out to freedom of motion, had long converted his stablegrass, without any exposure to colds, accidents, or stalls into boxes, from a dislike at seeing his hobthe organic injuries which arise from over-disten-by-horses treated worse than wild beasts, who at sion of the stomach and bowels. Under all circum-least are allowed to traverse their den. Loose stances, the shoes should be removed every two or three weeks, according to the work done on them; when the heads of the nails are worn away the shoe gets insecure, and will rattle whenever a screw is loose quiet is the test of efficient machinery in nations as well as in individuals, whatever Messieurs Polk and Thiers may predicate to the contrary. boxes are too generally left untenanted because no horse happens to be an invalid; yet they are more useful to sound animals than even to sick ones, since prevention of disease is better than its cure. The poor beast, cribbed, cabined, and confined, chained to his rack, and tortured by being unable to change position, is put for hours to the stocks, and condemned to the hard labor of having nothing Mr. Miles condemns the mode in which the to do-which destroys dandies and bankrupt complates or shoes of racers are fastened on, in which missioners. The prisoner suffers more from long eight and nine nails are frequently used for fear of standing still than from any trotting on the hardest "casting." No foot, human or equine, can ex-road-it is the rest, not the work, that kills; and pand in a tight shoe; and the horse declines, and very properly, throwing his whole weight with all his heart into his feet. The Derby course is a mile and a half in length; to accomplish which requires 330 good race-strides, of 24 feet each; the loss of one inch on each stride gives 9 yards and 6 inches : "But suppose the loss to be 4 inches on each stride, which it is much more likely to be, then it would amount to 36 yards 2 feet, or 13 lengths; which is fully enough to raise a cry of "foul play," the "horse is amiss," &c. Now, no jockey in the world, however frequently he may have ridden a horse, can so exactly measure his stride as to be enabled to detect a deficiency of one 72nd part of it, which 4 inches would be, much less could he detect the 288th part, which 1 inch would be: so that he never could make himself acquainted with the real cause of so signal and unexpected a defeat, and the whole matter would remain involved in mystery, casting suspicion and distrust on all around."-p. 35. Unfortunately, the high-mettled racer, who wears the shoe and knows where it pinches has not the gift of speech like Dean Swift's Houynims. The horse has this deficiency in common with the baby, whence farriers find their cavalry quite as difficult to manage as physicians do their infantry, who cannot explain symptoms. The falling off of speed which is often observed between a horse's "last gallop" and the race, may be accounted for by his having taken his gallop in his old shoes, to which the feet were accustomed, while the race was run in new ones, firmly nailed on from head to heel, effectually "making him quite safe," by putting it out of the range of possibility that he should ever be enabled to "get into his best pace." Mr. Miles recommends three quarter plates, which should be fastened on by no more than six nails, and these placed only between the outer heel and the inner toe. This is well still more, when the pavement of the stall is uphill, which, as his legs are of equal length, and not like a cameleopard's, is at once painful and injurious; he meets the difficulty by standing on his hind toes in order to equalize the weight, and thereby strains his tendons and gets "perched." The floor should be perfectly level aud paved with granite slabs, which should drain themselves by having herring-bone gutters cut in them, as nothing is more fatal to the eyes of horses than the ammonia so usually generated under them. A box so arranged is not merely a luxury to a horse and mare, but as absolute a necessary as one at the Haymarket is to a lord and lady. Nature is ever our surest guide. The animal when grazing in a field never is quiet a second; frog and sole are always on the move, and therefore in good condition, because they regularly perform their functions; the cushion of the navicular is never there absorbed as it is in an idle stall. If the brains of learned men are liable to be dried up under similar circumstances of otium cum pinguitudine, the soles of irrational creatures necessarily must fare worse: turn the same animals into loose boxes, and the slightest tap on the corn-bin will occasion at least fifty wholesome expansions of every sensitive organ. Mr. Miles gives working plans of the simple contrivance by which he converted a four-stalled stable into one of three boxes. This suppression of supernumerary stalls was effected by shifting the divisions. A tripartite arrangement is far preferable to solitary confinement, for horses are curious, social animals; they love their neighbors, and like to see what they are at, as much as county families do, whose pews adjoin in their parish church. The best partition is brick noggin, which should be cased with boarding, and surmounted with iron rails: the separation should be carried highest near the manger, in order to prevent the company from watching each other at meals—a thing which is not only unmannerly, but injurious to health. Each hopes to get some of his neighbor's prog, and is also afraid of his neighbor getting some of his; insomuch that the best bred horse, even when next to a pretty filly, invariably bolts his feed-just as a Yankee senator does at a boarding-house table d'hôte, although Fanny Butler sits at his side. Dyspepsia is the sure result of this imperfect mastication. -becoming his own farrier. So thought the pupils of Abernethy, after his publication to the world of the panacea blue pill; but take courage, gentlemen," said he, "not one of your patients will ever follow my advice." Mr. Miles, however, like the Oriental hakim, prefers exercise to mercurial treatment-"the best physician is a horse, the best apothecary an ass. Exercise, combined with cleanliness, is meat, drink, and physic for horse and groom; although the latter loves rather to lurk in the larder, and never curries his own Roman-cemented carcase-and thinks, reasoning from his own sensations, that no harm is done to a horse by not going out until his legs begin to swell. A regular daily walking-exercise of two hours is the smallest possible quantity to ensure health; while One word only on diet. The groom will persist in treating his horse like a Christian, which, in his theology consists in giving him as much too many feeds as he does to himself; but shoes are not more surely forged on anvils than diseases are in the stomach both of beasts and men who make themselves like them. Nature contrives to sustain health and vigor on a precarious, stinted supply, since it is not what is eaten but what is digested that nour-three or four are much better. ishes. Her system should be imitated in quantity and quality; she regulates the former according to the length of the day and the amount of work required to be done, and bids the seasons, her handmaids, vary the latter by a constant change in the bill of fare. Her primitive sauces are air and exercise, and her best condiment, however shocking to the nerves of Monsieur Ude, is mud: more pecks of real dirt are eaten by quadrupeds who graze in the fields, than are of moral dirt by your biped parasites who make love to my lord's eyebrow and soup-tureen. Provide, therefore, your nice nags with their cruet and salt-cellar, by placing in each manger a large lump of rock-salt and chalk, to which, when troubled with indigestion or acidity, they will as surely resort as the most practised London diners-out do to their glaubers and potash; nor will they often require any other physic. If a bucket of water be placed always in their reach, they will sip often, but never swill themselves out to distension, which they otherwise are "obligated to do" (like their valet) whenever liquor comes in their way, in order to lay in a stock like the camels, who reason on the uncertainty of another supply. "When masters remember that the natural life of a horse is from thirty-five to forty years, and that three fourths of them die, or are destroyed, under twelve years' old-used up-with scarcely a foot to go upon; I take it," says Mr. Miles," that they will be very apt to transfer their sympathies from the groom, and his trouble, to their own pockets and their horses' welfare."-p. 41. Yet, were it not for the wise provision of nature which causes legs to swell after inaction, and the overlively exuberance of antics by which a fresh horse exhibits his schoolboy exultation of being let loose and getting out of the stable-probably even less than the present poor pittance of exercise would be given by idle grooms and timid masters. The horny wall of the horse's foot is apt to get dry and brittle in a hot stable where temperature ought to range from 56° to 60°. Dry straw, coupled with excess of heat, produces cracks in the crust, the natural effects of overbaking; this is counteracted by grease and moisture, using the first first-which is an axiom-in order to prevent evaporation. Mr. Miles furnishes the receipt of an ointment which he has found to succeed admirably. In hot summer days the feet should be tied up in a cloth, and occasionally plunged into buckets of cool water; beware, however of washing the feet too soon after exercise, as it checks perspiration and induces fever; clean them when cool, and rub the hock and pasterns dry with the hand-the best of towels; a stopping also at night of fresh cow-dung keeps the frog moist and sweet. Boxes, however beneficial to horses, are unpopular with prejudiced grooms, who have an instinctive dread of improvements which do not originate with themselves; and although in truth few classes are more ignorant of the philosophy and ologies of the horse than stable folk, yet, in common with all who handle ribbons or horse-flesh, they have jockeyed themselves into the credit of being the knowing ones par excellence; accordingly such servants, especially if old ones and treasures, generally rule and teach their masters, for gentlemen pique themselves vastly on connoisseurship of pictures and horses, and are shy of asking questions which imply ignorance. The whole genus groom has an antipathy to any changes which give them more work; they particularly dislike, when they have "cleaned" their charges, to see them lie down, "untidy" and "dirty" themselves again; they sneer at what they call " finding mares nests;" and pretend that horses eat their beds, as the pious neas and his friends did their tables. But Mr. Miles has invented a remedial muzzle for these gross feeders, of which he gives us an engraving. Boxes again are ruinous to the veterinary surgeon, who fees grooms, since they do away with the great cause of profitable grogginess. These gentry are jealous of amateur farriery, and abhor any revelations to the uninitiated of family THE WORSE FOR WEBSTER.-The accusations secrets in plain intelligible English. Mr. Miles of fraud and peculation brought against the great cannot expect to be popular in the west, a latitude American statesman, Mr. Webster, have turned which imports rather than exports wise men; the out to be utterly groundless. We fear Mr. Webhorse-doctor shudders lest disease, death, and him- ster will lose his popularity amongst his countryself should be set aside, by every man-Milite ducemen in Pennsylvania.—Punch. LEGACY.-A bequest of goods and chattels by will. Some parents leave a good name as a legacy to their children; and some children, directly they get the good name, put it on the back of a bill as the best means of turning it into a profit. Many a good name has been eventually dishonored by this process. A legacy is either general or specific. The man who left behind him a receipt for a pill that was a specific for every disease, left undoubtedly a specific legacy. As it is just possible that a man may not have been taxed heavily enough in his lifetime, a tax is laid on his property at his death, called a legacy duty; so that the taxgatherer may be said to pursue his victim even beyond the grave.—Punch. of a man of swarthy complexion, drugged with Brooke's sketch from the living model :- 66 erous nor blood-thirsty; cheerful, polite, hospitaSimple in their habits, they are neither treachble, gentle in their manners, they live in commu [Conclusion of an article in the Quarterly Review.] A FAIRER field than Sarawak for the exertions of the Christian missionary scarcely presents itself in the uncivilized world. In that field we earnestly hope that the Church of England may be the first. The hill Dyaks in the province are estimated by Mr. Brooke at some 10,000 in number, and, as might be expected under such rule as he has es-nities with fewer crimes and fewer punishments tablished there, are fast increasing. The last accounts received speak of visits of chiefs to Mr. Brooke from a distance of two hundred miles in the interior Among their bad qualities Mr. Brooke enumerates Of course there is a reverse to this picture. deceit, a disposition to intrigue, superstition, and its attendant propensities to persecution and oppression. than most other people of the globe. They are passionately fond of their children, and indulgent even to a fault. I have always found them good"These people," he states in one of his letters, authority, and quite as sensible of benefits confertempered and obliging, wonderfully amenable to "are mild, industrious, and so scrupulously hon-red, and as grateful as other people of more est, that a single case of theft has not come under favored nations "-Vol. ii., p. 128. my observation, even when surrounded by objects easily appropriated and tempting from their novelty. In their domestic lives they are amiable, and addicted to none of the vices of a wild state. They marry but one wife; and their women are always quoted among the Malays as remarkable for chastity. Their freedom from all prejudice and their present scanty knowledge of religion would render their conversion to Christianity an easy task, provided they are rescued from their present sufferings and degraded state; but until this be done it will be vain to preach a faith to them the first precepts of which are daily violated in their own persons. caste? character the outward circumstances of power in Mr. Brooke says elsewhere, (vol. ii., p. 184,) "The Dyak is neither treacherous nor cunning, Mr. Brooke's time has been too much and too and so truthful that the word of one of them well employed to allow him to make many scienmight safely be taken before the oath of half a tific additions to our knowledge of the natural hisdozen Borneans. In their dealings they are very tory of Borneo. He has, however, not failed to straightforward and correct, and so trustworthy collect some particulars of that race of quadrumana that they rarely attempt, even after a lapse of for which the island has long been famous, and years, to evade payment of a just debt." this a better raw material for Christian manufacture the nearest to man in anatomical structure and in Is not which, with one exception, is supposed to approach than the proud and warlike savage of New Zea-its consequent habits and gestures. Nor has Mr. land, or the Hindoo steeped in the prejudices of Brooke been idle as a collector. Five living speIs such a field as this to be left to the cimens of the orang-outang were shipped by him Jesuit, or to the chances of Protestant sectarian in one vessel for England, but, we believe, died on zeal? We have some hope that these questions the passage. His report on the animal, published will be answered as they should be answered from in the "Transactions of the Zoological Society," rich and episcopal England; and that the great is appended to Captain Keppel's first volume. and wealthy of the land will come forward and The largest adult shot by Mr. Brooke was 4 feet tell our venerated primate-find us a man of 1 inch in height, but he obtained from the natives piety, enterprising zeal, and judgment, and we will provide the means of establishing him in a land which, with God's blessing on his efforts, to use the words of one who knows it, he "will not wish to exchange for any sphere of action on this side heaven."* The passages above quoted are well calculated to excite Christian sympathy on behalf of Mr. Brooke's special protégés, the aboriginal Dyaks; but it must not be supposed that he has no corner left in his heart for the Malay, who has been scarcely less maligned by common report, than the Helot race he oppresses. We cannot profess to know what notions the term Malay conveys to our readers in general. With us it raises the vision *The "Address" of the Rev. C. Brereton did not reach us until this article was completed. It gives an able precis of Mr. Brooke's labors, and concludes with an earnest appeal made to the English public, at his request, for assistance towards the establishment of a church, a mission house, and a school at Sarawak. Mr. Brooke is an attached member of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishops of London, Norwich, Lichfield, Oxford, and Calcutta, have already given their sanction to the undertaking. May 26. a dried hand which would indicate far greater dimensions, and we think there is ground to suppose that the stature which has been attributed to a Sumatran species, fully equalling or exceeding that of man, is attained by the same or a similar inquiries do not tend to elevate the character of the species in Borneo. Mr. Brooke's observations or Bornean animal in respect of its approximation to humanity, as compared with his West African competitor, the chimpanzee. native woods, attributed to him by some writers, The activity in his is denied by Mr. Brooke, who describes him as slow in his motions, even when escaping from man, and making no attempt at defence except at close quarters, when his teeth are formidable. but the formation of his nest, a mere sort of unHe appears to be agile and dexterous in nothing covered seat which he weaves of branches with much rapidity. Mr. Brooke's account of the nidification of the animal tallies exactly with that by Mr. Abel, the naturalist to the Chinese Embassy of Lord Amherst : "While in Java," says Mr. Abel, p. 325,"he lodged in a large tamarind tree near my dwelling; and formed a bed by intertwining the small branches, | not be supported and carried out by the British and covering them with leaves." "The rude hut," says Mr. Brooke, "which they are stated to build in the trees, would be more properly called a seat or nest, for it has no roof or cover of any sort. The facility with which they form this seat is curious; and I had an opportunity of seeing a wounded female weave the branches together and seat herself within a minute. She afterwards received our fire without moving, and expired in her lofty abode, whence it cost us much trouble to dislodge her." government. Captain Wilkes did not touch at Borneo itself, but his account of the neighboring Sooloo Islands is the best and most detailed which has come under our notice.* ous to the invader, and success would be purchased at an expense of gunpowder and blood, which, though neither Quakers nor members of a peace society, we abhor to contemplate. We have already referred to Mr. Davidson's volume. It is the work evidently of a man of very distinguished natural ability, and though proceeding from one whose life seems to have been devoted to mercantile industry and adventure, the style of its literary execution is such as most professed men of letters might well envy. He gives Our accounts of the chimpanzee in its native us a most agreeable résumé of observations collectstate are perhaps little to be relied upon; but it is ed in some forty passages across the ocean to India, certain that in its gregarious and terrestrial habits the Indian Isles, China, and Australia. He deit has a greater affinity to man than the solitary and fends the opium trade, insinuates a desire for the arboreal orang-outang. The former is said to retention of Chusan, and advocates a compulsory build a hut on the ground not much inferior to the opening of intercourse with Japan. Against this dwelling of the negro-but, unlike him, to build it, latter suggestion-with much respect for, Mr. Danot for his male self, but for his wife and family. vidson, and with grateful veneration for the memoHe uses a club, possibly for support in locomotion, ry of Sir S. Raffles, who did more than cast a longmore certainly and with tremendous effect for assaulting eye on Japan-we enter our protest, on grounds and defence; and, if all tales be true, he buries his which have been amply set forth in two former dead. In all these accomplishments the Bornean numbers of this Journal. We believe the Japanese homo sylvestris is decidedly deficient. In youth to be a contented, prosperous, and, on the whole, both have been found gentle, playful, imitative of well-governed people, ready to rip themselves up man, and capable of strong attachment. The chim- on the appearance of the British flag in their wapanzee some time since exhibited at Paris, who ters. If one empire of the world chooses to indulge lived in the first circles of French society, was a taste for seclusion, to eschew Manchester goods, much visited by M. Thiers, and attended in his last and make its own hardware, we think it ought to illness by the court physicians, was most impatient be indulged. The risks of invasion would be seriof solitude. The maturer character of both species is probably much influenced by adventitious circumstances. The forests of Africa, swarming with huge reptiles and the larger carnivora, are a rougher school than those of Borneo, from which "rabidæ tigres absunt et sæva leonum semina." A French navigator, Grandpré by name, tells us of a chimpanzee which became an able seaman on board a slaver, but was so ill used by the mate that he died of grief. Why does this give us a worse opinion of the mate, and a warmer feeling of indignation, than if the victim had been one of the human cargo? In their immunity from the fiercer beasts of prey the forests of Borneo have greatly the advantage not only over those Caffrarian wastes where the cowering missionary frequently reads prayers from his fortified wagon to a congregation of lions, but over the more civilized settlement of Singapore. Mr. Davidson's volume (p. 51) gives a frightful account of the degree to which the jungles of that island are infested by the tiger. Captain Wilkes, the very intelligent commander of the United States discovery expedition, who visited Singapore in 1842, affirms that before the settlement of the island tigers did not exist in it, but that they have since swum the straits, and have devoured no less than 200 human victims within a short distance of the town. It is no wonder that the botany of Singapore is, as Captain Wilkes states, imperfectly known. Its jungles come into respectful competition with the forests of Assam, from which, under Lord Auckland's government, five thousand tiger-skins were produced in one year to claim the government reward. The elephant is supposed to be extinct in Borneo, and we hear nothing of the camel, which Herrera mentions as abundant. Having quoted Captain Wilkes, we may add that he bears the honorable and impartial testimony of an American gentleman and officer to the value of Mr. Brooke's exertions in Borneo, and that he appears to consider it impossible that they should We e are not, however, more than Mr. Davidson or Sir Stamford Raffles. indifferent to the advantages our commerce could derive from any relaxation, voluntary on the part of the Japanese, of their rigid system of non-intercourse; and we admit that there are circumstances of the present moment which may bring such a change of their policy within the verge of possibility. We have no doubt that long before this the reverberation of our guns on the banks of the Yellow River has been felt in the council chamber of the palace of Jeddo. It is not possible to pronounce what particular effect the sound may have produced on the Japanese mind. It is well known that the Japanese entertain a hereditary contempt and aversion for their near kinsmen of the celestial empire. In their commercial intercourse, the latter are subjected to restrictions as rigid, and conditions as humiliating, as those to which the Dutch have so long submitted. The original relationship of the two races was probably a near one, but a separation of ages has left the recollection of triumphant resistance to the Chinese invader unimpaired, and has produced striking differences between them, generally to the advantage of the Japanese. The habits of personal cleanliness which pervade all classes in Japan would alone constitute a strong distinction in their favor. We think it highly probable that the intelligence of the humiliation of the Chinese has been received in Japan with something of the satisfaction with which, as we remember to have heard, the Chinese wardens of the marches looked on at the discomfiture of the mountaineers of Nepaul who gave so much trouble to our best troops and commanders. Their applications for assistance or refuge were met with insult and con * See "Narrative of the United States' Exploring Expedition." Philadelphia edition, vol. v., ch. ix. for the more expanded treatise on eastern commerce which he promises soon to publish. It has, and will probably still more, become the province of England to direct to Australia and other quarters the streams of population and labor which only require her hand to guide them from various over-peopled quarters of the east, to fertile but unpeopled wastes. At page 119 of Mr. Earl's volume will be found some valuable observations on this extensive and interesting subject. Many of the islands of the Indian seas adjacent to Australia, such as Kissi and Rotti, suffer periodically from famine-others are only relieved of their surplus population by the abominable expedient of the slave-trade. The Celebes, China, and Continental India, are all ready to irrigate the thirsty soil with streams of useful labor. Of these Mr. Earl con tumely, which broke out in such expressions as ity-and it is well calculated to make us anxious "Truly you are a great people! Who are you, that you should resist the English," &c. &c. We cannot, however, imagine that satisfaction of this description should be unmixed with apprehension at any prospect of a visit from the conquering nation whose exploits, seen either through Chinese or Dutch spectacles, might not assume a very prepossessing aspect, particularly when coupled with the last instance of the appearance of the English flag in the waters of Japan-that of the "Phaeton." We are nevertheless told that reports have reached Java that the Japanese government were in expectation of a visit from the English, and that the government at Jeddo would now receive an amicable commercial mission. If this be so, the experiment is worth trying; but if it be tried, we earnestly hope that it may be committed to some officer of approved discretion-some naval Pottin-siders the Malay the cheapest, from his habits and ger-who will not stain our flag by any act of vio- requirements as to dress the best customer for the lence or illegal aggression, such as in the case of British manufacturer, and the best adapted for the " Phaeton" was to be palliated, but in our clearing new lands. The Chinese are the best agopinion hardly justified by the warlike relations riculturists, manufacturers, we believe we may add which then existed between ourselves and the miners-India furnishes the best herdsmen. It Dutch. We have no enemy now to run to earth has been found at Singapore that from these variin Japan, and if we cannot at once establish friend- ous sources the supply of labor has fully kept pace ly relations with its inhabitants, and procure from with a growing demand. Mr. Davidson says that the local authorities the usual hospitalities of a the Chinese junks bring annually to this part of friendly port, pilotage, provisions, &c., without the world from six to eight thousand emigrants, humiliating and inadmissible conditions, we know who ultimately find employment either in the not by what law of nations we can insist on a re- island, in the tin-mines of Borneo, or the Malayan versal in our favor of the code of an empire which peninsula. "Spartam nactus es"-if we can only never itself has indulged in acts of aggression. contrive to turn to account the territory within our We doubt, indeed, whether either menace or vio-legitimate control, we shall rub on for some time lence could lead to any result more satisfactory than to come without coercing Japan. The merchant they would deserve, and we believe that in such dangerous waters as those of Nagasaki, the safety not only of boats' crews, but even of a ship of war, might be compromised by rash contempt of Japanese militia, and equally by rash reliance on the weakness or the good-will of a people with whom self-sacrifice at the order of the sovereign is an in veterate custom. As to any such specimen of bad faith as would be exhibited in our forcible retention of Chusan, we consider it beyond the sphere of serious argument or reprehension, and we do not imagine that there is much more chance of any diplomatic arrangement with the Chinese by which we could keep possession of it, than there is of Lord Aberdeen conveying the Channel Islands in a leasehold tenure to Louis Philippe, or of his obtaining from that sovereign a reëntry on our old possession of Calais. We are, however, quite in accordance with Mr. Davidson when he advocates immediate measures for working the Borneo coal-field. "All her majesty's steamers on the coast of China might be supplied," he says, "with fuel from the same quarter-particularly as several empty ships go to China every season in search of freights homeward, which would gladly call at Borneo en route and take in a cargo of coals to be delivered at Hong Kong at a moderate rate per ton. To establish this coal-trade on a permanent footing, a treaty would require to be entered into with the Sultan of Borneo. This, I have no hesitation in saying, might be effected, and the requisite arrangements made with the Borneo authorities by Mr. Brooke, whose influence in that quarter is deservedly all-powerful."-Davidson, p. 295. Mr. Earl's volume, Enterprise in Tropical Australia," is also a performance of sterling abil and the emigrant to Australia will find much useful information in these two works of Messrs. Davidson and Earl; and with readers for amusement they cannot fail to be popular. We could fill pages with descriptions and anecdotes of the most lively interest which abound in both: Mr. Davidson's especially, exhibits a rare mastery in picturesque narration. PUNCH'S POLITICAL DICTIONARY. LORDS, HOUSE OF.-One of the constituent parts of the parliament of the United Kingdom, and comprising the body known as the peers; so that they who insist that our constitution is peerless, are guilty of a slight error. The lords are either spiritual, including the archbishops and bishops, or temporal, who may have been so called from their ancestors having first obtained their dignities by a readiness to temporize. The eldest son of a peer is a peer at his father's death—as if in the aristocracy of talent the eldest son of a poet should be born a poet. From the old proverb, one would imagine this was the rule of succession to the temple of the muses: but the words poeta nascitur, must be qualified by non fit, which may be translated, "Unless he is not fit for it." Peers are sometimes created from amongst lawyers and soldiers, when, to prevent the coronet being like a tin-kettle fastened on to the head, as in the celebrated dog case it was tied to the tail, it is usual to settle a pension in tail male, on the recipient of a peerage. The peers have been called the hereditary wisdom of the legislature; but as it is thought they can sometimes evince their wisdom better by holding their tongues, and keeping away from the house, their presence is not necessary to their votes, which may be given by proxy. |