The urgency to which the King of Dahomey was subjected, ended, in 1852, in his yielding. England had proposed to pay him some annual sum for a time, as a partial compensation for the loss of his revenue: it may therefore be presumed that he is a stipendiary of the British government; and as the practices given up by him can scarcely, in any circumstances, be suddenly revived, his interest will retain him faithful to the engagement. It is a strange, bold, and perilous undertaking, that he should direct his disciplined army, his hero and his heroine battalions, to the arts of peace! But to these he and they must henceforward look as the source of their wealth, security, and greatness. Queen Victoria, it is said, has lately sent the King of Dahomey two thousand ornamental caps for the Amazon soldiers. CHAPTER VIII. DAHOMEY--SLAVISH SUBJECTION OF THE PEOPLE--DEPENDENCE OF THE KING ON THE SLAVE-TRADE--EXHIBITION OF HUMAN SKULLS--ANNUAL HUMAN SACRIFICES--LAGOS--THE CHANGES OF THREE CENTURIES. Dalziel, in slave-trading times, shocked the world with details in reference to Dahomey. Duncan and Forbes have again presented the picture in the same hues of darkness and of blood. Ghezo is a good king as things go, and rather particularly good for an African, for whom the world has done nothing, and who, therefore, cannot be expected to do much for the world. He has a threatening example before him. His elder brother is a prisoner, with as much to eat and more to drink than is good for him--caged up by a crowd of guards, who prevent him from doing any thing else. He was deposed, and reduced to this state, because his rule did not suit his subjects. Ghezo, therefore, has the office of seeing men roll on the earth before him, and scrape up dust over themselves; of being deafened by vociferations of his dignity and virtue and glory and honor, by court poets and parasites, on state occasions; the office of keeping satisfied, with pay and plunder, the ferocious spirit of a blood-thirsty people; the office of looking out for some victim tribe, whom, by craft and violence, they may ruin; and the office of procuring, catching and buying some scores of human victims, whom he and his savages murder, at different set seasons, in public.