The “durable memorial” was understood to be a service of silver, since made in the United States, and perhaps none the less brilliant because opium syce may have paid for it; and, as a change must have come over the commodore’s dream, for on the 9th of October, 1853, he writes to the secretary of the navy: “The most profitable branch of trade carried on by many of the Americans, English, and other foreigners, is of a clandestine character, in violation of the laws of China and the stipulations of the Cushing treaty; and it is difficult for a naval commander, in extending the protection of his ship, to distinguish between the property engaged in the legal or illegal trade.” And in concluding the same despatch, he says: “In my business with Japan, where as yet there are no American merchants, or diplomatic agents, I have the assurance of not being interfered with, and shall be able to act with energy and promptitude, and without embarrassment, and whether successful or otherwise, the responsibility will all rest upon myself.” Then comes an epistle from four little Malwa and Patna “tuft-hunters” of Hong Kong, who also like to make Judy Fitzsimmons of themselves. After giving “His Excellency” much that is fulsome and adulatory, they speak of his having opened the “_commerce_” of Japan, “not only to us, but to the world.” What nonsense. We have no _commercial_ treaty with Japan, but only one “of peace and amity,” and strange that the newspapers will persist in saying so. Mischief may come of it in inducing some Yankee trader to go there with an assorted cargo, who will be very apt to have his labor for his pains. But for the seriousness of speech that marked the presentation to “His Excellency,” by the governor of Rhode Island, on behalf of its general assembly, of a splendid salver, having on it “in testimony of their appreciation of his services to his country in negotiating a treaty of amity _and commerce_ with Japan,” together with the commodore’s teaching the heathen _the observance of the Sabbath_, that worthy functionary would be deemed waggish. On the morning of the 11th of September, being the ninth day, of the ninth moon, of the fourth year of the reign of Hien-fung, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry left in the English mail-steamer Ganges for home; the Mississippi and the Macedonian firing the parting salute, and the men in the rigging giving three cheers. We were to have taken our final leave of the grand, celestial, central, middle, flowery kingdom, on the same day, but it stormed, and we did not leave until the next morning, and few, if any, saw the naked hills of Hong Kong fade in the distance with regret. A few hours before us, the poor Porpoise got under way and left the port—that port to which her sail “Should never stretch again.”