palms of her hands all the days of her life;
for if there be any virtue in the bastinado, I
will leave her no feet to walk upon. As to
the giaour, by the beard of the Prophet, I will
have his head."

Long before this speech was finished, he
had crossed the road, traversed his courtyard,
entered his house, ascended the staircase,
and gained the portal of his wife's apartment.
He tore aside the silken curtains, and
rushed into the room, livid with rage, just as
Leila Khanoum was in the act of bending
over a large chest of richly-carved wood, in
which she kept her suits of brocade and cloth
of gold, her jewels and her sequins. Hassan-
el-Djeninah saw the state of affairs
at a glance. The giaour must be in that
chest!

He knocked over the wretched black slave
as one might a ninepin, rushed to the chest,
and tried to raise the lid. It was locked.

"The key, woman!—The key!" he roared.

"My lord, I have it not," stammered Leila
Khanoum. "I have lost it—I have sent it to
be repaired."

"The key!" screamed Hassan-el-Djeninah,
looking ten thousand Bluebeards at once.

With tears and trembling Leila at length
handed him the key, and then flung herself
on her knees, as if to entreat mercy. The
infuriated Hassan opened the chest. There
was somebody inside, certainly, and that
somebody was habited as a giaour; but
beneath the Frank habit there were the face
and form of Lulu, Leila Khanoum's Georgian
slave.

"What is this ?" asked the bewildered
Hassan, looking round. "Who is laughing
at my beard? What is this?"

"Yadacé!" screamed Leila Khanoum,
throwing herself down on the divan, and
rolling about in ecstasy. "Yadacé, Oh, my
lord, for you took the key!"

"Yadacé," repeated the Georgian slave,
making a low obeisance.

"Yadacé," echoed the negress, with a
horrible grin, and showing her white teeth.

"Allah Akbar!" said Hassan-el-Djeninah,
looking very foolish.

And such is the game of Yadacé.

TRADE.

How trade has expanded since the Anglo-
Saxon time, when Billingsgate was the sole
London wharf for the discharge of ships'
cargoes: how British commerce has grown
from the small beginnings of the Norman
period: how it has struggled on and augmented
in spite of royal decrees and ordinances
promulgated for its protection, but, in reality,
fettering and crippling it in every direction,
would require more pages than can be
here spared. One king prescribed the
prices at which certain goods should be
bought and sold: another declared in what
places trade should be carried on: a third
forbade merchants, under heavy penalties,
to deal in more than one kind of merchandise.
Foreign merchants were compelled, by
another sovereign, to expend all the proceeds
of the goods they sold in the purchase of
English merchandise,—a kingly method of
settling the balance of trade. Thus, law was
heaped upon trade, until trade was almost
overwhelmed and the merchant felt puzzled
as to the legal mode of conducting his business.
It need not therefore be matter for
surprise that, in the days of the white and red
roses the whole community did not transact
as much business as is now done by any single
high class commercial firm in London,
Manchester, or Liverpool.

But some faint and disconnected ideas may
be gathered, of the present growth of our
commerce, in a morning stroll through the
city towards the docks, and past the busy
haunts of trade. The incessant rumble of
waggons groaning beneath the weight of
valuable goods, in their transit from ship to
warehouse or railway: the crowded river
with its endless forest of spars; the mass
of shipping within our docks; the hum
of the busy hives which stretch beyond our
sight in all directions, teeming with goods,
wares, and merchandise, from all quarters of
the globe; the stately fabrics reared for the
purposes of trade and banking, afford a
glimmering, indistinct conception of what is going
on around us; but, there is a book issued
from the official press, from which may be
obtained a clear and definite account of
our enormous commerce. It is a Public
Ledger opened periodically by the Board of
Trade.

This volume of figures is the Annual
Statement of the Trade and Navigation of
the United Kingdom, for the year eighteen
hundred and fifty-three, much improved
upon its predecessors; indeed, there seems
little more to be desired in the way of
information concerned with the subject of the
work. Whilst in every other branch of the
executive, affairs are managed on the old
cramped routine system of a middle-age
period, this department alone keeps pace with
the wants of a progressive age. The
explanation of this is, that the Board of Trade
is brought into such intimate relation with
the stirring minds of the day—merchants and
men of business—that it has caught from
them the spirit of the time, and moves onward,
whilst all around it has been standing still.

Great as is the mass of figures in this volume,
there is no confusion. The tables of abstracts,
general imports and exports, transit-trade,
principal imports and exports, general
shipping, are classified and marshalled
with the regularity and precision of the
divisions and regiments of a well-trained
army. An index to the whole presents a
bird's-eye view of all the remarkable data
connected with our trade and navigation, not
alone for the year under special notice, but