groaning piteously, but without having the
sense to stir from the spot. One day, a nun
beside her fainted, leaning her head upon her
shoulder. She did not stir, but would have
allowed her companion to fall to the ground if
others had not come to her assistance. Another,
being ill in bed, stuck the sheet full of pins all
round her, and then gathered herself into a heap
on the pillow, where she remained motionless,
in order not to disturb, she said, the marvellous
symmetry of her couch. Another made little
dolls out of rags, and then rocked them on her
bosom, calling them her sons. There were also
two old lunatics, one of whom was constantly
conversing with Joachim Marat and Ferdinand
the First. The second, whenever she heard the
drums beat, cried, "The French! Here come
the French !" One night, she threw herself
into a well, and was drowned. But the convent
which contains the greatest number of insane
inmates, is that of the Romites, whose horrible
and truly Brahminical austerities lead still more
rapidly to madness. This sepulchre for living
women was founded by a half-crazy female
hypocrite, with the approbation, and under the
patronage, of the Romish Church.

By her vigorous and persevering efforts
Enrichetta broke loose from Benedictine fetters.
For these endeavours in detail, the reader is
referred to the book. After her liberation, she
became acquainted with a worthy man. of
elevated sentiments and energetic character.

He loved her, for the sorrows she had home;
And she loved him, that he did pity her.

In short, they determined to marry. The
Church formally refused its consent. Arguments
and supplications were useless before the
monumental and inexorable " Non Possumus;" so
their union was blessed by a priest of a different
communion. With a husband who adores her,
whose love she reciprocates, fulfilling the duties
of a good wife, mother, and citizen, Madame
Caracciolo asks why she should be considered
an unworthy object of Divine mercy and
grace?

FORWARD!

On, on! Though your star be crossed
By the black night-rack, and your way be lost,
Though the breakers beat, and your feet may shrink,
Delay were death on the darksome brink!

On, on! Though you fain would creep
Into rest and slumber of love's own sleep,
Or, lingering, wait for the evening sun,
Red-lit and golden when work is done!

On, on! Though your dream might be
To rest awhile on the moonlight sea,
While whispering wave and the night-wind sigh
Would woo you to peace by their lullaby.

On. on ! Though the waves below
Are ringing your knell as you onward go!
On, on! Though the winds before
May waft you wayward to death's dark shore !

On, on! Through the wind and rain
With the blinding tears and the burning vein!
When the toil is o'er, and the pain is past,
What recks it all, if we rest at last?

CHINESE AMUSEMENTS.

THERE is a whiz, a buzz, a whirring music
in the air, all sorts of grotesque objects are
floating about, rising and falling and dancing
to and fro; there are broad-winged birds, and
many-coloured dragons, lizards, bees, and
butterflies, and painted circles and squares, and
radiated suns and moons and stars. Most of
them have pendent tails, and strings in their
centres, the linking line which connects these
aërial monsters with the earth. Follow down
the thread to the ground, and you will find at
its end a grave-looking man, who, though he
devotes his principal attention to the evolutions
and the harmonies of his own belongings, now
and then silently turns to contemplate those of
his neighbour. These are Chinese kite-flyers.
Kite-flying is the amusement of the young and
the old— but more especially of the old — and
these kites exhibit in a wonderful way the odd
inventive fancies, the strange traditions, and the
immemorial habits of this singular race. The
English kite took its name, no doubt, from the
bird, of which the primitive aspirant was
probably a rude imitation, but the Chinese designations
are multitudinous: fung-tsang, the wind
guitar; chi-yan, paper-hawk; kwin-chi, neither
more nor less than the English kite, bird and
toy; and all sorts of fanciful and poetical titles.
The form of the ancient French kite was
probably that of a beast, and not of a bird, as they
call it a cerf-volant, a flying stag.

In China people say, and there is some truth
in it, that the swaddled babe appears almost as
solemn and as staid as a mandarin, and that
there, more than anywhere, the child is the father
of the man. The mandarin looks like a giant
child, the child a dwarf mandarin. Especially
among the opulent the child is smothered
with costly garments. If a girl, the aristocratic
torturing of the feet begins, and in the morning
the cries of the poor victims undergoing the
cruciate process may often be heard in the
streets, — but both sexes are subjected to the
painting art. Pearl powder upon the forehead,
vermilion upon the lips, jet upon the eyebrows,
rouge upon the cheeks, fantastic, costly, and
elaborated caps upon the head, cumbrous
garments upon the body, so that the lad, almost
before he is able to walk, is encumbered with
more clothes than he can carry, ornaments more
than enough to interfere with his locomotive
powers, and he seems already a little old man.
Stiff as a bonze, and ready, as it were, to be
stuck into a niche of a Buddhist temple—
he is as if petrified into an image of everlasting
contemplation. The sobriety of age is incarnated
with the plastic nature of youth, and the sports
and amusements of the siau-hai-tze, the little
son child, are shared by the yú-tsin, the tsu-yú,