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'Not all that tempts our wandering eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Not all that glisters, gold.'

'Ah!' said he, 'false Tou-Keen! you deceived your faithful Si-Long: he would have treasured you as the precious metal, and behold you elude his grasp as a slippery fish. Farewell, however, Tou-Keen! far be it from me to cherish feelings of revenge or hate against one whom I have loved so truly.'

Having spoken thus, he was possessed with a strong desire to put an end to his miseries by a plunge into the tank. But the drowsy god was just at the time beginning to exercise so powerful an influence upon him, that he was constrained to defer this till he should have taken a short nap.

To this end he fell asleep; and in his sleep he had a dream. From a vase, that stood upon a pedestal in the middle of the tank, a little mist seemed suddenly to arise, which, gradually spreading and ap. proaching him, revealed amid its rolling volumes the figure of his guardian joss. This was a little punch-bellied divinity, who sat cross-legged, as is the custom of all guardian josses. His face was full of quintessential wisdom; its very furrows seemed to have been made by wise saws; and the air of the whole was a sort of proverbial expression. My son,' said he, though gravity of face suiteth with wisdom, yet laughter itself is not so vain and profitless as tears; and remember that half a potfull is better than no rice. Therefore arise and go thy way, and away with ungainly grief. Bend thy steps south-eastward from this province of Honan, and pass through Hoo-Pe, till thou comest to Kiang-Si. There attend the chances that await thee. This much I read of thy fate: the Emperor yet shall honour thee, though now he hath thus cast thee down; and thy name shall go forth through all the land, and be remembered through all ages. If the honour cometh slowly,-the great wall was not built in a day; keep up thy courage, and persevere in the path upon which thou enterest; patience and perseverance dug the great canal. Here, take this talisman. It will make hard things easy to thee. It will aid thee in all thou devisest. It will make hot cold, and cold hot. But whenever thou hast some purpose to effect, thou must hold it in thine hand. Untouched it will avail nothing. Farewell.'

As soon as the joss had vanished, Si-Long awoke. At the time he fell asleep, the moon had not long appeared above the horizon. When he rose, she had just reached her zenith. There she hung, as the great chandelier of the night, the stars glittering round her like single candles stuck about the cupola of heaven. Majestic orb! she rolled among that little company like an eighty-four pounder among a flight of pistol bullets. A Chinese writer has aptly likened her to a pot of rice, and the stars to scattered grains.

Si-Long arose. He looked up at the moon: he looked down at the water he thought of his meditated leap into the latter, but, with the moon reflected within it, it appeared too deep. He looked at the vase that stood on a pedestal in the midst of the tank; and, as his eye fell upon this, his vision or dream returned to his memory, and quite determined him not to plunge too rashly. But as he recollected the apparition of the joss, he remembered likewise the talisman; and not

until then did he notice that betwixt the finger and thumb of his left hand he held a small crooked coin, which he recognized immediately as the gift of his guardian spirit. Encouraged by such a discovery, he rose and bade adieu for ever to that sad scene of former happy hours; and finding that the garden-gate was fast, climbed the wall with some difficulty, declining the proffered assistance of a bamboo, and alighting in safety on the other side, set forward at once on his journey towards the south-east, in obedience to the recommendation of the joss.

We leave him on his way, and return to Pekin. As we approach the city we hear Tou-Keen from every mouth. Within the walls Tou-Keen is the universal theme of conversation too; but there we hear less of her, for not being far from the palace, all speak in whispers. Tou-Keen the beautiful; Tou-Keen the fantastic; Tou-Keen the petulant; Tou-Keen the cruel; Tou-Keen the unjust; Tou-Keen that rules the ruler; TouKeen that squanders the money of the land; everywhere Tou-Keen; all day long Tou-Keen; Tou-Keen, Tou-Keen, Tou-Keen,-nothing but Tou-Keen.

The young Empress, in the mysterious way that sometimes happens, had acquired surprising influence over the old Emperor, although he was the despotic sovereign of the great Central Empire, and she a weak woman just raised to dignity from no very high rank among his subjects. Ah, wonderful, beyond all wondrous things thy fascinating power, O beauty, who imprisonest Kings with thy locks, and makest Emperors bend beneath thy lashes! Tou-Keen soon felt her power, and she made the Emperor feel it; and like the shock of a galvanic battery, it passed from him to those next him in degree, and so through the whole circle of society. Never were humours so fantastic as those which Tou-Keen taxed her lord, and which her lord taxed the whole country to gratify. She ordered new buildings and decorations in the palace; a gim-crack arch of porcelain in the great court before it; tall columns supporting at telescopic heights the figures of warriors and great men, (it was a pity she possessed no Herschel's telescope to bring their features within view,) new gardens filled with majestic rocks of glass and terra cotta, with trees dwarfed down to shrubs, and with flowers in pots upon artificial branches, fine specimens of the manner in which Art can turn Nature inside out, or make her stand upon her head. She would have, too, garden buildings devised in all the forms of Chinese puzzles, lakes of coloured water filled with artificial fish, and lofty bridges erected upon level lawns. She issued her command, and temples and theatres were there mingled together, and pig-tailed gods and fantoccini flourished falchions and flags, beat drums, and smoked their pipes and incense-pots in happy emulation of each other. But in the decorations of her own apartments, in her dress, and in her food, the beautiful and proud Tou-Keen was yet more lavish and fantastic. Large pieces of furniture, wrought of rhinoceros ivory, in that exquisite style of carving in which the Chinese are yet unequalled, or in jade and precious marbles, inlaid with diamonds and rubies; pillows and beds of spider-silk, stuffed only with parrots' down; robes woven of gold filaments resembling silk, and enriched with a wonderful embroidery, which all the first ladies in the empire were compelled to execute ; dishes of woodcocks' brains, the pupils of cats' eyes, snails' horns, and mouse-foot jelly; these were but a few among her multitudinous devices.

The whims of the most whimsical Tou-Keen furnished ample employment to all the best artificers in ivory, in the precious metals, in silks, in

porcelain, and in whatever else might conduce to ornament and luxury. Yet her commissions were felt to be not patronage but tyranny; for, though those who executed her commands in a manner which gave her satisfaction were well paid, and even rewarded for their labour; the much larger numbers who failed, in spite of their most anxious endeavours to win her approbation, were punished with various degrees of severity. Some were bambooed; some had their shops or workhouses destroyed; some were banished to remote parts of the empire. The tasks which she set to the porcelain manufacturers were particularly troublesome; for after these had formed the clay, by the most careful and skilful manipulations, into unusual and difficult shapes, their labours were apt to be rendered unavailing by the uncontrollable effects of the fire to which the earthy material had necessarily to be subjected.

Among other fancies, she had demanded from these artists a bath, of most fantastic form, the sides and edge of which should be formed of a filigree of flowers, fruit, birds, shells, and figures; the whole to be contrived with great intricacy and elaborated with extreme minuteness. Of this a model was prepared in Peking, and sent thence to the factory at King-te-chin; then an establishment of considerable repute, which has since become the most famous in all China.

No such piece of porcelain, either for size, or for the curiosity of the workmanship, had hitherto been attempted; and the proprietor of the furnaces was dismayed when he received the order. Among the artificers in his employ, however, was a young man of extraordinary skill, who had already performed some commissions of the Empress, for which the furnaces of best repute had been tried; the manufacturers of best repute bastinadoed: and this person, who had lately been looked upon as a prodigy of skill and oracle of art, readily took upon himself the perilous responsibility of forming the porcelain bath.

This ingenious young artist-(perhaps you may have guessed so much) was no other than our heroic Si-Long,-at least Si-Long the hero of our story,-who had arrived one evening, tired and hungry, in the neighbourhood of the porcelain manufactories of King-te-chin. As he had found it neither reputable nor agreeable to roam about so long without money, or credit, or changes of clothes, and as he recollected the advice of his guardian joss that he should tarry in Kiang-Si, it occurred to him that he might be able to obtain employment in the porcelain factories, and that as he was possessed of much ingenuity and taste, he might thus occupy himself in a manner at once lucrative and honourable. He found no difficulty in forming an engagement with the master of the principal establishment; but what may have rendered this the less difficult was, that when he presented himself to make an offer of his services his hand was unconsciously placed upon the talisman he had received from the joss. But for this fortunate accident it is probable that references as to character might have been required; and it would not have been pleasant to have been forced to appeal to his friend, the Emperor, for credentials.

He afterwards remembered the talisman, and it made hard things easy to him, and aided him in all he devised. This it was which enabled him, though with such little experience in the fabrication of china ware, to perform what had baulked the ablest workmen.

Si-Long applied himself assiduously, with the assistance of several ingenious artists, to imitate in the clay the model of the bath. It was

wrought to its due form: was coloured and glazed. After that it was placed, not without some difficulty, in a furnace, which, under his particular superintendence, had been erected for the occasion. No vessel of porcelain clay the tenth part of its size had ever before undergone the process of burning. Of course, therefore, the most extraordinary care must have been requisite in the operation. Si-Long had had the furnace formed with various apertures, in such a manner that the heat could be suddenly increased or diminished on any side; and he himself stood upon a raised platform, and looked down a sloping shaft into the enormous cistern of fire, that he might observe the progress of the burning, and give orders to the workmen accordingly. It was necessary to subject the clay to intense heat; the bath was so large, that otherwise a portion only might have been sufficiently baked, whilst other parts were scarcely affected by the fire. Si-Long's arrangements had been excellent; all seemed proceeding well. He did not forget, meanwhile, to hold the talisman in his hand; and he fully appreciated the value of the gift, and the benevolence of the giver. He looked hard at it, his heart overflowing with satisfaction and gratitude. It was lying on the fore-finger of his right hand, and the knuckle of the thumb: his hand was half-closed, and his thumb-nail was in the bend of the middle finger. 'O thou invaluable prize!' said he; and his thumb sprang suddenly upward, and twirled it in the air. He meant to have caught it as it fell; but, in his delight, he had tossed it rather too high, and he caught at it rather too nervously; it struck his hand, and rebounding from that, passed down the sloping shaft into the furnace, and fell into the bath. Si-Long looked after it in dismay: and, as his eyes were fixed upon the bath, he observed a line all down the side, a line which, at first, seemed scarcely thicker than a hair; but soon it appeared like a wire against the porcelain; then like a cord; and still it opened wider, and other similar indications of fracture became perceptible.

Si-Long was in despair. The bath was spoiled; the talisman was lost; all hopes of success were by that loss removed for ever; his reputation, of which he had grown proud, was ruined; the Empress, whom, in spite of the falsehood and cruelty she had exercised towards him, he had toiled, with great self-satisfaction, to gratify, would be disappointed of her bath: and the bamboo grew more abundantly in Kiang-si than in the northern provinces. These thoughts passed as quick as pulsations through his brain. Poor Si-Long was reduced to horrible despair; and clasping his hands together in a frantic manner, and tucking up his petticoat-swift as an ignis fatuus he plunged head-foremost into the fire.

When the master of the furnaces and his workmen perceived what SiLong had done, they ran away in great fright, and with much precipitation, some calling on Fo, and some on Con-fut-sze, and some on LaouKeun. They spread about through the neighbourhood, and told the tale at all the factories; then assembled in one place, and held a council of war; and after much deliberation, agreed to return, that they might afford SiLong all the assistance in their power.

They went back accordingly: but what was their surprise on opening the doors of the furnace, to find that the fire had burned out, that the bath was yet perfect, and fully baked, and that poor Si-Long lay, a mere heap of cinders, within it.

When they had reduced all that remained of him more completely to ashes, they deposited these in a porcelain vase, and buried them under the furnace. They mourned for him very strenuously; because they remem

bered that the Empress might have fresh fancies; and in such case, without a Si-Long, they had nothing better to look to than bamboos, or banishment-perhaps a bow-string.

The Empress was delighted with the bath exceedingly; but when she heard the fate of the unhappy Si-Long she was afflicted beyond measure with laughter uncontrollable.

'What,' said she, 'Si-Long, the audacious youth whom we let off so cheaply with a couple of hundred blows? The youth who accused the Empress of the Central Empire of inconstancy to him? A handsome youth, you say! black eyes, large ears, thick lips; as fat as turtle, and with a pig-tail reaching to his heel. Believe me, it can be no other than that same, that very same insolent Si-Long. And so he jumped into the fire? He, he he! how exceedingly queer! And they found him in this bath too, you say? Ho, ho, ho! I shall die with this fit. Quite baked! quite roasted! quite broiled! Ha, ha, ha! how absurdly ridiculous! Come, get me ready this bath, that my poor bambooed lover was fried in. Let it be well filled with cool cocoa-nut milk, and high-scented cinnamon waters, and spread lotus-leaf couches around. More pleasant to bathe in it then (wot ye?) than when it lay in the furnace of King-te-chin.'

As soon as the swiftest feet could convey the order, a thousand persons were up to their necks in water, gathering the petals of the sacred lotus, to heap up couches for the capricious Tou-keen. The bath was prepared in a less time than would appear possible, in a beautiful chamber, hung round with the costliest metal mirrors, and carpeted with several thicknesses of the softest silk. The walls were partly clothed with the same; and on ivory and silver tables were disposed baskets of the choicest fruits and flowers, and cages of the most gorgeous birds; whilst at either end of the bath stood huge vases of porcelain, filled with a rare sort of waterlily, and with strange and beautiful fish.

The lovely, the amiable Tou-Keen prepared for the bath, and dismissed her attendants. She floated in the cool cocoa-nut milk and high-scented cinnamon waters; and by drawing a tasselled string, upset a basket which had been suspended near the ceiling, immediately over the bath, and brought down upon herself a dewy shower of rose-leaves.

'And so,' said she, musingly, 'it is really the fact that that aspiring Si-Long, who would have made the surpassingly beautiful Tou-Keen a mandarin's wife-Tou-Keen, who was born to rule the ruler of the world, it is really a fact that he was scorched to death in this very delightful bath! Well, how exceedingly singular! Ha, ha, ha! I wonder which way he fell? Whether his head was on this side or on that? I can fancy his nose coming in contact with it here: he, he, he! And here, as sure as I'm an Empress, is a little crack. Hi, hi! What have we here?'

There was a little crack, as the Empress had said; and in the little crack was a little crooked coin, the talisman which Si-Long had lost. The little crooked coin was almost hidden in the little crack; and both the little crack and the little crooked coin were so little as before to have escaped notice. Tou-Keen, however, detected them. When she saw the little crack, she inserted in it the tip of one of her long nails, and as she scraped that along, it directed her eye towards the little crooked coin. No sooner did she perceive the latter, than, as was very natural, her fingers were upon it. That little coin, you will remember, was a coin of virtues. It would make hard things easy; it would aid in devices; it

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