LOUD thunder had been heard during the night, and never-ceasing flashes of lightning had glared over the room, without disturbing me; neither did the suspected ones in the hall of innocence and peace maraudingly drive us from our rest; but the rain, whisking and dropping with weary beat, was more effectual about five or six o'clock next morning, when all objects beyond the paper window looked cast down and carried a tearful expression about them, as they lay bathing and floating in the wet under an angry sky. A nice prospect, certainly!

The doors were released from their bolts, and a glance out at the long public room told nothing but that everybody had left long ago — even our vitiated opium-eater had rallied from his lethargic inebriation, and was off. The place where they had been, which looked so dramatic last night, was all but unrecognisable. It was as different as seeing the pit of a theatre when lighted up and crowded with a moving noisy audience, and viewing it again empty, dismal, and cold, in the starved daylight. There were the posts, the benches, the stools, and the wooden pillows; but all naked, bare, and dirty, with the black spider and scorpion-haunted beams above them, surrounded by mud-plastered walls, earthy, and not improved by some immoral illustrations — fit accompaniments to gambling and opium-smoking. The jailish-looking windows levied a heavy tax on the light as it struggled to force its way through the blackened sheets of paper, and scarcely reached the unsightly hillocks on the unswept earthen floor.

NOW that I have got thus far into the bowels of the Celestial land, and have carefully observed its greatest marvel, let me brush away the cobwebs and dust that shroud its paternity, and glean all the information respecting it, here accessible; for I am bound to acknowledge that I can hardly agree with those who assert that the erection of such a safeguard, by a peaceable and rather timid people, was the whim of a tyrant, and the gravest act of despotism, as well as of folly, that an autocrat could be guilty of.

Chinese history is abstruse and oftentimes perplexing, but I will consult only the best authorities.

It is known that, for many centuries before the Christian era, China was divided into a number of feudal states, in something the same way that Europe was twelve or thirteen hundred years ago, and that the same amount of turbulence and disputation was prevalent among the chiefs or princes that we find recorded in Western history. The number and power of these states was in proportion to the physical strength and political influence, or the weakness and temerity of the reigning monarch, who might sometimes be able to reduce them to complete subordination, and at other times rule only by their sufferance.

THE place wherein Moukden now stands is the same which in the almost traditionary times of Yau (2357 b.c.) bore the name of Tsing-chow; in his successor's time, Engchow; in the time of Han (206 b.c.), Liau-toong-kiun; and under the brilliant Tang dynasty (a.d. 618), Nan-tong-tau-hau-fou, that is to say, ‘the place which guarantees rest and tranquillity to the eastern people.’

Under the Tartar houses of Liau and Kiu, in the 13th century, it was sometimes called Tunking, or the Eastern Court, and at others Liau-yang, or the Sun of the Liau. Under the Mongol or Yuen dynasty, it was commonly called Shin-yang-lou, signifying properly ‘the path of the sun;’ and under the Mings, the affix lou was changed to that of ‘wi,’ city or burgh, and it was then Shin-yang-wi, the city or burgh of the sun; but the Mantchu warrior, Tien-ming, the ‘Providence of Heaven,’ having made himself master of the country to the east of the Great Wall, some years before his death deliberated with his friends on the choice which he ought to make of a situation for his court. It was concluded that this ought to be in a city, purposely built. The city was accordingly founded, and received the designation of the Eastern Court; but when his authority and influence began to extend itself to the Chinese side of the Wall, he did not hesitate to remove his residence to Shin-Yang.

WHEN the day broke next morning, we were up and preparing to depart from the dirty rooms and the mandarinish town of the Great Wall. Innumerable damages, over and above those felt yesterday, made themselves troublesome, and much in the way, and my head still swam a little and ached; but my eyes were the most painful, and fiery hot from the inflaming glare of the rocks. Otherwise, there was nothing serious to remind me of the exposure and buffeting about that had formed such a prominent episode in our quiet trip, and I relied on the excitement and exercise of a day beyond the Wall to put me on the high road to convalescence.

As we were ready to set off, and one of the spies in waiting had already started on his mission to inform the magnates of our intentions, the bill was sent for, and we fully expected to have something tremendous, if the charges were to be in proportion to the attentions we had received; but an answer came that there was nothing to pay but homage, for that the inn was a mandarins', kept up by government for the convenience of these worthies when travelling to and from Mantchuria; and all that was expected from us as we left was a formal obeisance to the absent son of heaven. Certainly a very moderate demand for such villanous and miserly accommodation, which reflected no great amount of credit on the Emperor's generosity to his servants, nor on the management of the home department.

HIEN-FUNG—the ‘Abundant Plenty’ — has been reported sick and dead times without end within the last two months. May these reports be incorrect, and may not some dreadful convulsion shake China to pieces?

What intrigue and wickedness may even at this moment be hatching—set on foot by the presence of the aweinspiring meteor through whose ghost-like substance we are watching the stars? Another comet did so, and we remember reading the old-fashioned tale. We endeavour to recall it.

Nearly a thousand years have been put down to the credit of the present world, and to the land of Sinim in particular, since the son of an obscure scribbler and village pedagogue, too lazy and idle to work in the fields, entered himself on the muster roll of a horde of freebooters, and soon proved an able and desperate associate in every perilous enterprise in which courage and cunning were required. The illustrious Tang dynasty was drawing near the usual Chinese dynastic dissolution, with its long list of wise princes, who had ruled so well, and who had raised the national prosperity to a degree before unknown,—as far beyond that of the Western middle ages as the civilisation of Europe of the present day is superior to the grovelling semi-barbarism of the modern Chinese.