that the person to whom it is addressed shall find it impossible to reflect its colour in his reply.  He will then sometimes, in his confusion, blunder into a truthful answer, but he does so generally with a bashful air, indicative of the painful consciousness that he has been reluctantly violating the rules of good breeding.  A search after accurate statistics, under such conditions, is not unattended with difficulty.

[Sidenote:  Exaggerated reports of population.]

I am confirmed, by what I have witnessed on this expedition, in the doubts which I have long entertained as to the accuracy of the popular estimates of the amount of the town population of China.  The cities which I have visited are, no doubt, suffering at present from the effects of the rebellion; but I cannot bring myself to believe that, at the best of times, they can have contained the number of inhabitants usually imputed to them.  M. Hue puts the population of the three cities of Woo-chang-foo, Han-yang-foo, and Hankow, at 8,000,000.  I doubt much whether it now amounts, in the aggregate, to 1,000,000; and even when they were flourishing, I cannot conceive where 3,000,000 of human beings could have been stowed away in them.

[Sidenote:  Rural population.] [Sidenote:  Town population.]

What 1 have seen leads me to think that the rural population of China is, generally speaking, well-doing and contented.  I worked very hard, though with only indifferent success, to obtain from them accurate information respecting the extent of their holdings, the nature of their tenure, the taxation which they have to pay, and other kindred matters.  I arrived at the conclusion that, for the most part, they hold their lands, which are of very limited extent, in full property from the Crown, subject to certain annual charges of no very exorbitant amount; and that these advantages, improved by assiduous industry, supply abundantly their simple wants, whether in respect of food or clothing.  In the streets of cities in China some deplorable objects are to be met with, as must always be the case where mendicity is a legalised institution; but I am inclined to think that the rigour with which the duties of relationship are enforced, operates as a powerful check on pauperism.  A few days ago a lady here informed me that her nurse had bought a little girl from a mother who had a surplus of this description of commodity on hand.  I asked why she had done so, and was told that the little girl’s husband, when she married, would be bound to support the adopting mother.  By the judicious investment of a dollar in this timely purchase, the worthy woman thus secured for herself a provision for old age, and a security, which she probably appreciates yet more highly, for decent burial when she dies.

[Sidenote:  Manufactures.]