The shrewd and remorseless avarice of the Chinese is illustrated in these volumes to perfection. From the emperor to the trader, all prey on the poor Tartars. Thus M. Huc meets a member of a great commercial house in Pekin, at Blue Town, and enters into a conversation with him. The merchant claims the missionary at once as one of his own trade, which, with Spartan brevity, he describes to consist in eating Tartars. “Eaters of Tartars!” exclaims good M. Huc, “what is the meaning of that?” to which the other answers, “Our trade—yours and mine—is to eat the Mongols—we by traffic, you by prayers.” On the missionary’s assuring him that he paid for every thing as he went along, and that his mission was purely disinterested, the merchant almost choked himself with laughing at the folly of a man who should venture into such a country for any other purpose than to prey upon its inhabitants; and then proceeds to describe the mysteries and moralities of the Wall street of China. We commend his system to our glorious army of shavers and capitalists. You see, he says, these Tartars “are simple as children when they come into our towns. They want to have every thing they see—they seldom have any money, but we come to their help. We give them goods on credit, and then, of course, they must pay rather high. When people take away goods without leaving the money, of course, there must be a little interest of thirty or forty per cent. Then, by degrees, the interest mounts up, and you come to compound interest; but that’s only with the Tartars. In China the laws forbid it; but we, who are obliged to run about the Land of Grass—we may well ask for a little extra profit. Isn’t that fair? A Tartar debit is never paid—it goes on from generation to generation; every year goes to get the interest, and it’s paid in sheep, oxen, camels, horses—all that is a great deal better than money. We get the beasts at a very low price, and we sell them at a very good price in the market. Oh! it’s a capital thing—a Tartar debt! It’s a mine of gold.” This is but one specimen of a Chinese “eater of Tartars.” M. Huc’s volumes are full of equally piquant sketches, and we know of few tourists who seize with such inevitable tact on incidents and peculiarities which illustrate the morals and the habits of whole classes of people. The work is one of the most original and novel yet published in “Appleton’s Popular Library of the Best Authors”—a collection of which no lover of readable books should be without. * * * * * _The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterward Mistress Milton. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 18mo._