VII.
The function faded wholly with the duty,
But left the everlasting bane or grace
Which gave her beauty.
She saw with unaffrighted heart
The ships forsake her empty mart;
But God had found her in her dwelling-place
And cursed her with her face.

                                VIII.
But still the old immortal beauty lingers,
And still she weaves the flowers of other Springs
With fairy fingers;
And still she holds her unreproved
Communion with a time removed,
Wafted from Heaven on the golden wings
Of high imaginings.

                               IX.
Is it enough that she is lovely? Lying
Unsinew'd till the populous sea recedes
And leaves her dying?
Or might she give, through pain and strife,
The Beautiful a deeper life,
Rising erect on sin and slothful creeds
To treble it with deeds?

                              X.
Peace to this Venice, though fulfilling never
The law that made her lovely; she must twine
Such flowers for ever!
Before our English woods are rolled
In blowing mists of autumn gold,
I trust to kneel before her still divine
And unforgotten, shrine.

CHINESE WAYS OF WARFARE.

SHARP work enough it was up at Canton,
when the war first broke out, and there were
only a few hundred English to hold their own
against many thousand Chinamen, including the
"Braves." These latter were represented as
such terrible fellows that they were obliged
to be kept chained, up, for fear of their breaking
loose and annihilating trembling humanity:
only being let out on special occasions, when
excessive bravery and daring were required to
achieve great ends.

Chinese warfare, however, consists generally in
devising plans which require not the presence of
man to execute, rather than in making bold sorties
to sweep away "outer barbarians" from the face
of the earth. The Chinese are partial to fire-junks
—their enemies, in a true spirit of ignorance,
are disrespectful enough to look upon in the
light of fireworks; they are, moreover, punctual
in their pyrotechnic displays, generally sending
them down the current at about a quarter to
four in the morning, conveniently waking up
the officer of the middle watch in readiness to
be relieved by the officer of the morning watch,
who has something to enliven the even tenor
of his way in watching them burn down and
finally explode, after drifting into the middle
of, and setting fire to, a number of native craft
moored comfortably for the night. It is a fine
sight, however, to see them glide majestically
past with the tide: the flames showing grandly
through the rails of their high and picturesque
sterns.

But the Celestials occasionally vary the
monotony of their fire-rafts, with an ingenious little
affair in a boat (a pretty idea), a large quantity
of manure of an extremely volatile nature, under
which they store a good deal of gunpowder; then,
when they have added a badly-fed convict to
scull down under the bows of an obtrusive ship,
they fire the match and swim for it. One of
these unasked-for bouquets exploded alongside
a vessel commanded by an Honourable English
captain, covering her decks and every one on them
with specimens of an extremely aromatic nature,
even to filling the chest of an officer which stood
under a hatchway, and which chanced to be open
at the time. They are fond, too, of enlivening the
tedium of warfare with various facetious acts, as
when the Dutch Folly Fort had been taken and
a blue-jacket garrison put in, the hail of "All's
well," made by the sentries when the bell was
struck, used to be answered by the light-hearted
little fellows in pigtails on the walls of Canton
with a true and correct imitation. Nor are they
averse to sending bad rockets over the heads of
barbarians; but whether with the intention of
striking terror and death to their hearts, is
unknown, the effect being simply amusement.

But we, on our part, rather astonished them
when the "man-of-war devil ships" (as they call
our steamers) began to play up, one fine November
morning, to the tune of red-hot shot and
shell: causing Celestial buildings to blaze in a
manner that would have induced the uninitiated
to believe them terrestrial, and converting high
and mighty houses into castles in the air.

The Chinese nature is also a confiding one in
warfare. This was seen when the French Folly
Fort fell, when those unfortunate persons who
were not engaged but had got into the line of fire
on shore and had been hit, went on board our
ships to beg the surgeons to dress their wounds.

For fear of coming into dangerous proximity
with the fire-rafts before mentioned, several
captured war-junks had been moored across
the stream ahead of the English ships, and
a guard of half a dozen marines with a
corporal, had been put into one of them to keep
a look out ahead. Now, it so happened that
some pull-away boats (small sharp-built junks
fitted with an innumerable number of oars, and
two long guns) came down the reach, one evening,
and, under cover of the darkness, began
firing right and left on the unsuspecting
English ships: which in their turn quickly
proceeded to send grape and case after them,
and also manned boats. The vessel which
had the guard in the junk, sent one of hers to
fetch them away, when they found that they
were not there, and, though the boat pulled round
to all the ships, nothing could be heard of the
missing "joeys;" it was thereupon concluded
that they had been carried off by the Chinamen.
The fact turned out to be, however, that, seeing
the firing going on, they thought they might as
well do a little in that way themselves, and
began discharging their muskets as hard as they
could; one of our English boats perceiving this,
and knowing nothing of there being marines