when the business of the day is over—there is no periodical literature to engage their attention. Their families do not present sufficient attractions to keep them at home, and sauntering about of an evening, with nothing to employ the mind, they are easily tempted into the opium shops, where one acquaintance or another is sure to be found, who invites to the use of the drug. Many of the middling classes dissipate their money in this indulgence, and, among the lower classes, those who indulge in the use of opium are reduced to abject poverty. Having no property, furniture, or clothes to dispose of, their wives and children are sold to supply their ever-increasing appetite for the drug; and when these are gone, with greatly diminished strength for labour, they can no longer earn sufficient for their own wants, and are obliged to beg for their daily bread. As to the supply of opium, they must depend on the scrapings of other men’s pipes, and as soon as they are unable, by begging, to obtain the necessaries of life, together with the half-burnt opium, on which their very life depends, they droop and die by the roadside, and are buried at the expense of the charitable. Two respectable young men, the sons of an officer of high rank, well informed, having received a good education, accustomed to good society, and who excited great interest in the minds of those with whom they came in contact, lately died. So inveterate was their habit of opium-smoking, and so large the quantity necessary to keep up the stimulus, that their funds were exhausted. Friends assisted them, and relieved their necessities again and again; but it was impossible to give them bread and opium too, and they subsequently died, one after the other, in the most abject and destitute condition. At Shanghae, just inside the north gate, in front of a temple, one of such destitute persons, unable to procure either food or opium, was lying at the last gasp, while two or three others with drooping heads were sitting near, who looked as if they would soon be prostrated too. The next day, the first of the group lay dead and stiff, with a coarse mat wound round his body for a shroud. The rest were lying down unable to rise. The third day another was dead, and the remainder nearly so. Help was vain, and pity was the only feeling that could be indulged.