history, which gives it at once a speculative value. If it be fur, its heat-producing powers are eloquently described. "It was this fur which, during the year of the great frost, saved the head of that illustrious family Chang. The cold was so intense that the people were mute. When they spoke, their words froze and hung from their lips. Men's ears congealed and were devoid of feeling, so that when they shook their heads they fell off. Men froze to the streets and died by thousands; but as for Chang of honoured memory, he put on this coat, and it brought summer to his blood. How much say you for it.?^" etc. The foregoing is a rendering of the language actually used by one of these sellers of unredeemed pledges.
I saw two or three men who were driving a trade in magic pictures and foreign stereoscopic photographs, some in not the most refined style of art; and as for the peep-shows — well, the less one says about them the better; they certainly would not be tolerated in any public thoroughfare in Europe. The original Punch and Judy is also to be encountered in the Peking streets ; puppets worked by the hands of a hidden operator, on just the same plan as with us. At night, too, 1 have frequently seen a most ingenious shadow pantomime, contrived by projecting small movable figures on to a thin screen, under a brilliant light from behind. Capital clay images may be purchased at some of the stalls; but in no part of China has this art of making coloured clay figures reached such perfection as at Tientsin. At that place tiny figures are sold for a mere song, which are by far the cleverest things of the kind I ever saw. These are not only most perfect representations of Chinese men and women, but many of them hit off humorous characteristics with the most wonderfully artistic fidelity.
If I go rambling on in this way over the city, we shall never
