“At last, before that door That bears so many a knock, Ere ever it opens to Sick or Poor, Like sheep they huddle and flock— And would that all the Good and Wise Could see the million of hollow eyes, With a gleam derived from Hope and the skies Upturned to the Work-House Clock! “Oh! that the Parish Powers, Who regulate Labor’s hours, The daily amount of human trial, Weariness, pain, and self-denial, Would turn from the artificial dial That striketh ten or eleven, And go, for once, by that older one That stands in the light of Nature’s sun, And takes its time from Heaven!” ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ There is something very amusing to us in this passage, which we find copied upon a dingy slip of paper in the “Drawer,” descriptive of the “sweet uses” to which sugar is put in “Gaul’s gay capital:” “Here is the whole animal creation in paste, and history and all the fine arts in _sucre d’orge_. You can buy an epigram in dough, and a pun in a soda-biscuit; a ‘Constitutional Charter,’ all in jumbles, and a ‘Revolution’ just out of the frying-pan. Or, if you love American history, here is a United States frigate, two inches long, and a big-bellied commodore bombarding Paris with ‘shin-plasters;’ and the French women and children stretching out their little arms, three-quarters of an inch long, toward Heaven, and supplicating the mercy of the victors, in molasses candy. You see also a General Jackson, with the head of a hickory-nut, with a purse, I believe, of ‘Carroway Comfits,’ and in a great hurry, pouring out the ‘twenty-five millions,’ a king, a queen, and a royal family, all of plaster of Paris. If you step into one of these stores, you will see a gentleman in mustaches, whom you will mistake for a nobleman, who will ask you to ‘give yourself the pain to sit down,’ and he will put you up a paper of bon-bons, and he will send it home for you, and he will accompany you to the door, and he will have ‘the honor to salute you’—all for four sous!” ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Few things are more amusing, to one who looks at the matter with attention, than the literary style of the Chinese. How inseparable it is, from the exalted opinions which “John Chinaman” holds of the “Celestial Flowery Land!” Every body, all nations, away from the Celestial Empire, are “Outside Barbarians.” And this feeling is not assumed; it is innate and real in the hearts of the Chinese, both rulers and ruled. A friend once showed us a map of China. China, by that map, _occupied all the world_, with the exception of two small spots on the very outer edge, which represented Great Britain and the United States! These “places” they had _heard_ of, in the way of trade for teas, silks, etc., with the empire.