With his usual foresight and shrewdness, Captain Liddle had announced his readiness to take a small number of passengers to China, or to London by way of China--rather a roundabout route home, it must be confessed, but one which recommended itself to certain colonists from its novelty, and from the opportunity it afforded them of seeing something of the wonderful land where so many Sons of the Moon lived and had their being. Captain Liddle knew what he was about by stating that he could provide accommodation for only a few passengers, for only a few took passage. Here is the way-bill:-- Mr. and Mrs. Pigeon and daughter, the latter five years of age. Mr. Bracegirdle. Stephen and Rachel Homebush, brother and sister. James Heartsease. Harry Wall. Rough-and-Ready. So that there were nine passengers in all, including little Emma Pigeon. The crew numbered twenty-eight persons, all told; and these, with the passengers and the captain's wife and her maid, made the total number of souls on board thirty-nine. Mr. Pigeon was the son of a wealthy squatter, who had lately died. Desirous of giving his wife and child better advantages than could be obtained in the colony, he had sold out his property, and was now on his way home, for the purpose of settling in the "old country." He was a rough kind of a gentleman at the best, as might be expected of one who had been brought up in the bush; but he had a tender heart, and was passionately devoted to his wife and child. Mrs. Pigeon was a sparkling little creature, full of life and bustle, never still, and with a laugh so merry and contagious, that every soul on board felt glad when it was first heard on the ship. Little Emma, as the child was called, was a small edition of her mother, with precisely the same natural gayety of disposition. The family were in high glee at the prospect of going "home" (even Little Emma, born in the bush, had been taught so to call it), and found in the pleasures of imagination some compensation for the natural sorrow they felt in leaving the bright and beautiful land of the South. Mr. Bracegirdle was a mystery. No one knew any thing about him; and as no one inquired, and he was not communicative, his antecedents could only be guessed at. Stephen and Rachel Homebush were a hard-featured morose-looking couple, whose piety was generally recognized as unimpeachable, but whose good-nature was certainly open to question. And this induces the reflection, that it is singular how often piety and sourness go hand in hand. It almost seems as if, with the majority of so-called pious people, religious contemplation chills the generous impulse, and hardens the heart instead of softening it. The light of truth falls on them not like dew, but like a miasma.