THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

MORE NEWS FROM CHINA.

BY THE EDITOR.

No. IV.

To Mr. Abel Dottin, Grocer, Manchester.

Dear Brother,

A violent cold having flown to my chest, I am too ill to enjoy retorting and retaliating, and which must plead my apology for not recriminating at more length. As such you must excuse my not resenting sereatim every point in your last letter, and making you thoroughly ashamed of yourself and your unnatural sentiments. I allude particularly to your taking refuge as an Uncle in the character of a Pawnbroker, and declining loans to your nearest ties, except on the usual sharking terms of those moral monsters. But trade hardens every

thing. It teaches to adulterate our genuine feelings with sordid ingredients, and to weigh the just claims of consanguity in scales that are any thing but correct.

Gracious heavens! where is a sister or a nevy to look up to for assistance if needful, but to a rich connexion without chick or child, rolling in wealth; and where I venture to say, every shilling he advances will be to his everlasting credit! O, Brother, consider your nevy's propinquity! Your sister's own son-and if ever a youth exhibited a decided propensity to get elevated, its him. I do hope, therefore, you will reflect before you shirk one so likely to redound upon you as dear Gus. Already by his native genius, improved by talent, he has arrived at a pitch of splendour to which few sons rise in the East; and of course the greater his eminence and prosperity, the more he will reflect on his relations. To be sure, if a nevy was going down in the world instead of up, some people might feel justified in backing him with a cold shoulder; but where he promises wealth, affluence, and opulence, rank, title, and dignity, to cut one's own flesh and blood, must be perfect infatuation! And suppose a little pecunery assistance was necessary to his exaltation, ought the laudable heights of his ambition to be chilled and snowed upon by a cold calculating passimony, Dec.-VOL. LXVI. NO. CCLXIV.

2 H

and let him be arrested on the high-road to fame and fortune, for want of a trifle, as I may say, to pay the gates? What's a paltry 507. for such a figure in China! And that dear Gus has turned out a phenomenon, is plain from his own account. So great a rise in life of course demands a corresponding study of appearances,-but as transpires, poor fellow, from his letter, he has lost all his linen and clothes. Such a misfortune must and shall be remedied, whatsoever shifts I may have to make, or if I strip myself to my last dividend. For I presume even you would not wish your nevy to be a General without a shirt, or a Colonel without inexpressibles, and especially when he has attracted, as I may say, the Eyes of Europe. A nevy who may some day have to be sculptured, collossially, and set up on a prancing charging horse, over a triumphant arch.

But some people may treat such a picture as chimerical, though quite as wonderful metamorphoses have come down to us. Look at Boneyparte, who at first was only an engineer officer, like Mr. Braidwood, and yet came to be Emperor of the French. Or look at Washington, who from a common American soldier rose to be king of the whole republic! For my own part I will say for my son, it has been my constant aim to instil genius into him, morning, noon and night, and to cultivate a genteel turn for either the army, or the navy, or the church. The last, I own, would have been most congenial to my maternal wishes, for besides the safety of a pulpit, a soldier or a sailor when peace comes, is a moral non-entity, but there is no peace in the church. However dear Gus would never hear of a shovel hat and a silk apron, and especially at the present time, when, as I understand, the clergy is to go back to their ancient, antiquated costume, and put on their oldfashioned rubrics. As to the law, he never could abide a chancellor's wig and gown, and indeed always showed a perfect antipathy to any thing legal. So far, then, the Chinese war was a blessing, and all has turned out for the best; for dear Gus has attained to martial glory, quite unusual at his age, and if a parent may predict, will some day be made a peer of, like Wellington, and hand himself down to posterity with his family arms.

In the mean time I have packed up for him a dozen ready-made shirts, together with such money as I could scrape up, namely four sovereigns, a sum, alas! which will fall far short of his Pekin expectations, and certainly not enough to let him see any great capital. In fact he names fifty pounds as the very smallest minimum for supporting the honour of his country at the Chinese court, and which most people will consider as very moderate terms. I do hope, therefore, when such a trifle is in the case and so much at stake, you will kindly contrive to make it up, or if cash is inconvenient, by an accommodation bill or a creditable letter to some banking-house abroad. As to security, my own U. O. I. would, I trust, be sufficient between relatives, or if you preferr'd, dear Gus would no doubt be agreeable to your taking out the amount in tea or Chinese fans, or nid-noddin mandarins, or any other articles you might fancy. In which case you can be no loser, but will enjoy the satisfaction of putting forward a shining branch that will greatly add to our family lustre.

How he escaped from such awful Waterloo work as he described is a perfect miracle. The mere perusal almost turned my whole mass

of blood, and made me feel as if poked and stabbed in every fibre, and squibbed and rocketted besides. Indeed war seems from his picture to be a combination of storm, total eclipse, the great earthquake that should have been, and the fifth of November. It follows that dear Gus must have been specially preserved from such a concatenation for some brilliant destiny, which it would be a sin in us to frustrate by any scrimp measures. I do beg and hope, therefore, to hear from you with the needful, by return of post, in which case I remain, dear Brother, Your affectionate sister,

Wisbech, 17th November, 1842.

Dear Mother,

No. V.

JEMIMA BUDge.

As I expected in my last, I have at length set foot in the Chinese empire, and am at this moment writing from Chew-shew, a regular Celestial village, though not to be found perhaps on the Celestial globe. However it is a pleasant place enough, and would be pleasanter if our quartermaster had not quartered me with a wholesale breeder of black beetles, for a great Soy manufactury in the neighbourhood—a hint which I suppose will set your face and stomach for the future against that soy-disant sauce. However, here is the process from the Chinese receipt. First fatten your beetles on as much pounded rice as they will eat. Then mash the insects to a paste, which must be slowly boiled in a strong decoction of Spanish liquorice. Strain the liquor carefully, and bottle it, well corked, for English use.

Since my last we have had several brushes with the natives, whose first attempt was to make a bonfire of us in the river, having agreed to a truce for the purpose. In fact a regular gunpowder plot; but such traitors are sure to split amongst themselves, and one of them gave our commander the office the day before. At first the report was treated as a bam. However, after dark, as soon as the tide turned, down came the fire-raft with the ebb, and if the pigtails had been content with a business-like flare-up of combustibles and destructibles, might have played old gooseberry with our ship. But the Chinese are famous for their pirotechnics, in which they take the shine out of Madame Hengler herself, so their vanity could not resist a little show off in the fancy line, to accompany their infernal machine. Accordingly, instead of the raft drifting quietly down on us, with a length of slow-match proportioned to the distance, we were warned of it two miles off by a shower of outlandish squibbs and crackers and serpents, cutting away in all directions, and then forming themselves into Chinese characters, one of them standing, as the pilot told us, for a certain very hot place. Of course we soon shifted our birth, and let the fire-raft drive clear of us, which soon after blew up in the shape of a great fiery dragon with a blazing tail, twisting to a point like a red-hot corkscrew, and spitting a volley of blue zigzaggy lightning darting out of its mouth. It was a splendid sight, beating the grand Vauxhall finales, or the Surrey Zoological, all to sticks-and except in one little accident a very satisfactory performance.

In the hurry of shifting the ship, the Chinese wash-boats that were fastened astern of her were all cut adrift, and getting entangled

with the raft, our damp linen was terribly over-aired. Being the first wash after the voyage from England, my whole stock, unfortunately, was in the tub-shirts, trowsers, stockings, in short, every thing-so that what I am to do for a change I know not, unless I can turn my blanket into a flannel waistcoat, and my sheets into a pair of ducks. A queer sort of toggery to exhibit in to the Brother of the Sun and Moon and the Imperial Family at Pekin. To be sure I have since obtained a few laurels, and if they were real ones might go to court as a Jack in the Green-but no, the thing is beyond a joke, and I do hope that on the receipt of this my dear mother will immediately forward a dozen shirts (fine ones mind) to her dear Gus. For trowsers, the climate being warm, I can perhaps make shift, à la Highlander, but the shirts are indispensable, and may be sent to the care of John Shearing, Esquire, Star Coffee-house, Drury-lane, who is coming out with the first reinforcements and supplies.

Having mentioned my laurels, you will naturally wish to know where they were picked. After the fire-raft business our commanders resolved in a council of war to waste no more time in chaffing, but to commence uncivil operations and do the offensive. So we were all disembarked, soldiers, sailors, and marines, and after a skirmish or two brought the enemy to a regular stand-up fight, at a place called KowTan. They were in great force, and opened a smart fire on us from their matchlocks and field artillery, which are small swivels fastened on camels' backs, but are frequently so overloaded that the recoil tears off the poor animal's hump. On our side we had lots of howitzers that kept shelling out their bombs and grapnels like fun.

Our right was composed of the marines, and our centre of the regulars, but we had no left at all on account of a swamp. The sailors were the reserve, only, as usual, they would not reserve themselves, but ran off helter-skelter to a Chinese castle, which they took by boarding. In the mean time Captain Pidding got possession of a tea-grove towards Howqua, while Twining's company captured a magazine containing about 20,000 pounds of fine gunpowder, and immediately opened a discharge of canisters, that made regular Mincing-lanes through the main body of the Teatollers. My own post was with a cloud of skirmishers that was pushed forward to enfilade our artillery, while it made a reconnoisance-but I do not pretend to describe all the manœuvres of our army, like the moves at a game of chess. Some eyewitnesses, I know, profess to have seen every thing in an action, right and left, back and front, and in the middle, as clear as the figures of a quadrille, but which is very different to my notion and experience of a battle. To my mind it is more like a turn-up in London, where you are too much engaged with your own customers to attend to what goes on over the way, or at the other end of the street,-not to forget the dust and smother, for the guns and cannons, as yet, are not obliged by Act of Parliament to consume their own smoke. To give a clear idea of it, just fancy yourself in a London fog, so thick that you can only see your two next files. Well, by and by, the right-hand one, after cutting an extraordinary caper, suddenly drops and rolls out of sight into the fog, and when you look rather anxiously for your left-hand man, you see Tom Brown instead of Jack Robinson. The next minute you throw a summerset yourself over a log or a dead corporal, you cannot

see which, and then plunge with your head into the big drum, or perhaps on a dismounted cannon, with a crash that makes you see all the gaslights in London in one focus. Of course, you're insensible for a bit till your refreshed with a kick or a stab, and then you revive again about as cool and collected as a gentleman waking suddenly, at midnight, to a storm of thunder and lightning, a smother of smoke, a strong smell of fire, and a burglar or two at his bedside. All you see distinctly is some sort of bright picked-pointed instrument within an inch of your eye, which of course you parry off by natural instinct, and then going to work at random, cut and thrust right and left with your sword, or pike, or bayonet into the darkness visible, which goes into something soft, and comes back red and dripping. That's to say, if you have good luck: if not, you get a slash or a poke yourself, from some person or persons unknown, in your throat, or your chest, or your stomach, or wherever you like. However, for this once you win first blood-so on you go groping, stumbling, poking, parrying, and coughing, when you've time for it, and winking if you can't help it, the flashes increasing like blazes, the smother getting thicker and thicker, and the noise louder and louder, so that you don't know you've been cheering except by getting hoarse and short of wind. No matter, on you push, or are pushed, into the cloud, till at last you dimly see a sort of Ombre Shinois dodging before you, that suddenly turns to a real Tartar, painted and dressed up to look like a Bengal Tiger, and flourishing a great double-edged sword in each of his fore-paws. Of course it's kill or be killed, so at it you go, like Carter and his wild beasts, only in right down earnest, two or three more Tigers joining in, clash slash, and the sparks flying as thick as in a smith's forge, or at a Terrific Combat at the Surrey or the Wells. Such a shindy is too hot to last, and, accordingly, if you're alive at the end of two jiffies, the chance is that you find yourself making quite a melodramatic Tableau-namely, your bloody sword in one hand, a Chinese pigtail in the other, and four or five weltering Tartars lying round your feet!

What followed I hardly know, my head seeming to spin like Harlequin's; but I am told that I performed prodigies of pluck, and which, if you do not read of in the despatches, must be laid to the envy and jealousy of our Top Sawyers and the Commander-in-chief.

The pigtails, to do the handsome, behaved with great coolness, many of them fanning themselves with their great fans in the heat of the action. But, as usual, European tactics prevailed over want of discipline; and the barbarians having both their wings broken were obliged to fly. The slaughter was prodigious-our mortars playing like bricks, and the flying artillery dropping their tumbrils with beautiful precision into the thick of the mob. The sword and bayonet, as we may suppose, were not idle, but indulged in lots of "sticks and strikes," as Miss Martineau says, at the expense of the Chinese, and turned a great many of their flanks. The swag is immense: including the enemy's military-chest, and the key of their position, which is of solid gold, and first-rate workmanship, and is to be sent home to England for presentation to the Queen.

The loss on the English side was trifling; only one man belonging to our ship being killed,-a London Billsticker who had volunteered