Very different is the case when the Celestial ox gores the Yankee bull. Indemnity, swift and condign, does what mortal hand can do to heal the hurt. A Chinese court, upon Chinese soil, is not allowed to try a Chinese for an injury done to the Christian stranger within Chinese gates. Treaties imposed by the strong arm reserve practical jurisdiction to our own representatives; and it is the peers of the alleged sufferer, not the peers of the accused, who virtually try the cause. Similar rules obtain in the other Mongolian empire. We all possess, as still quite a fresh sensation, a memory of the account published a few years since of the committing of harikari by a Japanese official of high social standing, at the bidding of a native court, in atonement of an affront offered to an American officer--how the representatives of the United States were formally invited, in full uniform, to witness the bloody self-immolation of the proud but to the law submissive Mongol; how everything went off _en regle_, from the theatrical preparation of the stage with seat, sword and red carpet to the climax of decapitation of the culprit by his body-servant; and how our representatives in gilt and blue filed out shocked, but vindicated, and satiated with more than the full measure of justice pressed down and running over. Harikari has not begun, nor is it likely soon to begin, to thin the ranks of our Californian office-holders. Few die, none resign, and absolutely none are got rid of in that way. They have no treaty-courts to make them afraid. Their lives are their own, and we hope may always be. But we trust, also, that they will accord a like privilege to their neighbors from over the way, and cultivate the impression that life may be dear as well to a man with a lemon complexion, oblique eyes and a pig-tail. As an evidence of a dawning disposition to accept this view we may be permitted to hail with satisfaction the disappearance for twenty-seven years and six months of a Californian who declined adopting it. E. C. B. LITERATURE OF THE DAY. Peru. Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas. By E. George Squier, late United States Commissioner to Peru. New York: Harper & Brothers.