tion he was in Edinburgh, having gone thither to consult Dr. (afterwards Sir James) Simpson on the illness of his wife, and there he was to remain at bay during all the barking of the journals. A little cold comfort came from Charlotte Brontë.

"There is power in that character of Balder," she wrote, "and to me, a certain horror. Did you mean it to embody, along with force, many of the special defects of the artistic character? It seems to me that those defects were never thrown out in stronger lines."

Despite the ill-success of his second book, Dobell spent a very happy season in Edinburgh. If not famous, he was at least notorious, and was well enough in health to enjoy a little social friction. Alexander Smith, the secretary to the University, was his bosom-friend; and among his other companions were Samuel Brown, Blackie, and Hunter of Craigcrook Castle. "Smith and I," he wrote, seem. destined to be social twins.' Just then there appeared in Blackwood's Magazine the somewhat flatulent satire of Firmilian,' written at high jinks by the local Yorick, Professor Aytoun. The style of Dobell and Smith was pretty well mimicked, and the scene in which Gilfillan, entering as Apollodorus, was killed by the friends thrown by Balder from a tower, was really funny. The poets satirised enjoyed the joke as much as anybody, but they little guessed that it was a joke of a very fatal kind. From the moment of the appearance of the "spasmodic" satire, the socalled spasmodic school was ruined in the eyes of the general public. A violent journalistic prejudice arose against its followers. Even Dobell's third book, 'England in Time of War,' though full of fine lyrics, entirely failed to reinstate the writer in public opinion. He was classed, though in a new sense, among the illustriously obscure," and he remained in that category until the day he died.

Perhaps the pleasantest of all his days were those days in Edinburgh, when, in conjunction with Smith, he wrote a series of fine sonnets on the war, which won the warm approval of good judges, like Mr. Tennyson. There was something almost rapturous in Smith's opening sonnet to Mrs. Dobell

A friend wrote that he could love "Alexander" for that sonnet; and, indeed, who could not love him for a thousand reasons? The story of Smith's martyrdom has yet to be told-nay, can never be told this side of the grave. But let this suffice-it was a martyrdom, and a tragedy. How tranquilly, how beautifully, Smith took the injustice and the cruelty of the world, many of us know. Few know the rest. It was locked up in his great, gentle heart.

When I have mentioned that, immediately after the War Sonnets, Sydney Dobell issued independently his volume of prose, England in Time of War,' his literary history is told. Though he lived on for another quarter of a century, he never published another book. Three works, The Roman,' Balder,' and England in Time of War,' formed the sum total of his contributions to literature while alive; and all three were written at one epoch, in what Smith called "the afterswell of the revolutionary impulse of 1848." For the last half of his life he was almost utterly silent, only an occasional sonnet in a magazine, or a letter in a journal on some political subject, reminding the public that he still lived. Of this long silence we at last know the pathetic cause. Sickness pursued him from day to day, from hour to hour, making strenuous literary effort impossible. Never was poet so unlucky. Read the whole heartrending story in his biography; I at least cannot bear to linger over these tortures. He had to fight for mere breath, and he had little strength left him to reach out hands for the laurel. How meekly he bore his martyrdom I have already said.

When I met him, in 1860, he had the look of one who might not live long, a beautiful far-off suffering look, wonderfully reproduced in the exquisite picture by his younger brother, an engraving of which faces the title-page of his biography. Many years later, not long indeed before his death, he sent me a photograph with the inscription "Convalescens convalescenti," but all photographs reproduce the man but poorly, compared with the picture of which I have spoken.

by synecdoche for a house that which, made of feathers, is used within doors: scilicet, a fan.

*

Another, and, in the written language, equally common term for a fan, is sha (or shah), compounded of the same word yü, feathers,' placed above the character-also an ideograph-which stands for a female companion; in other words, a woman fanning her lord, such indeed being one of the daily duties of the denizens of a Chinese harem. With regard to the constant use of the word feathers' in these combinations, it would appear from Chinese authorities that wings of birds and leaves of trees dispute, if not divide, the honor of having furnished the first fans to mankind. But Chinese authorities are eminently unreliable on most points, and the invention of the fan has been variously attributed to different heroes of antiquity according to the fancy of each particular writer. For instance, the Yu-hsüo, or Child's Guide to Knowledge, tells us that to the Emperor Hsien Yüan, who came to the throne B.C. 2697, we are indebted for this boon to suffering humanity; while the Kuang-shih-leifu, a well-known cyclopædia of antitheses, defers the invention to the reign of Wu-wang, the first ruler of the Chow dynasty, or more than a thousand years later. Other authorities declare for the Emperor Shun, B.C. 2255, with whose honored name tradition has lovingly coupled more than one similar achievement designed to promote the welfare and happiness of his children. Of the

history of fans in China, and their grad ual development from the primitive bird's wing or unelaborated leaf, there is positively nothing to record, unless perhaps it be the publication by the Emperor Ngan Ti, of the Chin dynasty

*With regard to the two words sha and shan, it is stated in the Fang-yen, by Yang Hsiung, that the former is employed to the east, the latter to the west, of the Shan-hai-Kuan, or point at which the Great Wall of China abuts upon the sea coast, dividing Manchuria from the eighteen provinces.

It should also be mentioned that there is another character, similarly read sha, but differently written, which likewise means a fan. The two are given in dictionaries as separate words, but it is not improbable that they were originally the same.

(A.D. 405),* of a strange enactment against the use of silk in the manufacture of these articles. It was apparently a mere sumptuary law, having for its object the protection of silk, the material which, according to a very ancient belief still prevalent in China, can alone give warmth to the aged. In one of his dissertations on political economy Mencius observed: At fifty, without silk no warmth; at seventy, without meat no satiety.' The sage had been advocating a more extensive cultivation of the mulberry tree, with a view to provide an adequate source of food for the silkworm; and in the present instance it is most probable that the imperial edict was directed against the indiscriminate waste of silk for purposes of mere luxury; but like all similar enactments, this one fell speedily into desuetude.

Almost every large city in China, and certainly every important division of the Empire, has its own characteristic fan; or else there is something peculiar in the make, color, or ornamentation of the common folding' fan as seen in that particular district, by which it may be distinguished from its ubiquitous congener. For the folding fan, as the Chinese call it, is the fan par excellence; and all that ingenuity of design has hitherto accomplished has not succeeded in displacing this convenient form from the affections of the people at large. The large palm-leaf, with its stronglybound edges and natural handle, large quantities of which are exported annually from Canton and elsewhere, may possibly be the cheapest and most breeze-compelling of all kinds; but it is not very portable, and cannot readily be stowed away about the person, or stored so as to last into a second summer. finds favor in the eyes of tea-shop and public eating-house keepers, and is always to be seen in the guest chambers, whether of guilds, monasteries, or private establishments. The folding fan, on the other hand, occupies but little space; and when not in use may be stuck in the

It

*Here again authorities are at variance. Hsieh Ling-Yün credits this enactment to the Emperor Hsido Wu, of the same dynasty, who reigned from 373 to 397 A.D. The date given in the text is taken from the Kuang-shih-lei-fu. + Book vii.

high boot of the full-dressed Chinese gentleman, or at the back of the neck in the loose collarless jacket, which, with the addition of a curt caleçon, constitutes the entire toilette of a Chinese coolie. Besides, the folding fan opens into a tolerably smooth surface, fairly well adapted for the painter's art; and even the dirtiest specimen of Chinese vagabondage loves to rest his eye upon some gaily painted flower or a spray or two of the much-prized bamboo. Consequently, the folding fan obtains all over the eighteen provinces of China Proper, and beyond, far away across the Great Wall, over the steppes of Mongolia and the mountains of Tibet. Of the more elaborate kinds, produced at Canton for export to Europe, with their exquisitely carved or perforated ivory handles, &c., it will suffice to say that such are quite unknown even in the highest and wealthiest circles of Chinese society, the folding fan being rarely the vehicle of extravagant expenditure in this respect. It may be made, indeed, either of paper or of silk; for handle, ivory or sandal wood may be used; but even then the general get-up is as a rule plain, while for the common folding fan of the Empire, bamboo is the material most extensively employed, being at once the cheapest and most durable of all woods. Pendents of amber, jade, ivory, cornelian, and other substances, are also affected by the more refined, and a fan case beautifully embroidered in some quaint pattern, accompanied perhaps by some appropriate classical allusion, is a very ordinary birthday present from a sister to a brother or from a wife to her husband. The number of ' bones or ribs to a folding fan is a matter which is by no means left to chance. Sixteen, including the two outer pieces, may be quoted as the standard; but fans made in certain localities have more, as many as thirty-two, and sometimes even thirtysix. The reason why the number sixteen is preferred is that such a fan opens into a convenient number of spaces to receive the poetical inscription which custom has almost, but not altogether, tied down to a given number of lines. Irregular inscriptions are, however,

*

*This again is a translation of the Chinese

term.

not uncommon. The Hangchow fan has a great many bones. It is a very strongly made article; and though only of paper, prepared in some way with oil, may remain plunged in water (it is said) for twenty-four hours without injury. But this fan finds no favor with those who can afford to pick and choose, and for a rather singular reason. Just as with the Chinese white is the emblem of death and mourning, so black is regarded as typical of moral impurity, and black things are consequently avoided on the strength of the proverb, ' Proximity to vermilion makes a man red; to ink, black.' Now the Hangchow fan is, with the exception of a sprinkling of gold or silver on the face, as black as it well could be; and it is therefore at a discount even among those by whom the most trifling form of economy cannot be satisfactorily ignored.* Chair coolies, everywhere a degraded class, invest their money in these fans without hesitation, doubtless feeling themselves beyond the reach of such influences as these. Old men, too, may use black fans without scruple. Their age is held to have placed them on a vantage ground in this as in all other respects; for, as Confucius observed, That which is really white may be in the darkest dye without being made black,' and a man who has led for years a spotless life is unlikely to be influenced for the bad by mere contact with a fan. Black fans, with black lacquer handles, are made in Canton for sale to the outer barbarian, the hated foreigner, whose moral obliquity is regarded by the masses of China as more prononcé than that of the lowest of their low.

Besides the large non-folding feather fan, generally looked upon in Europe as a hand screen for the fire, some beautiful specimens of the folding fan are also to be seen in feathers, which show, on being opened, beautifully painted bouquets of flowers, butterflies, birds, &c., &c. Kingfishers' feathers and beetles' wings are also largely employed in the manufacture of fans and screens, and

* So punctilious indeed is a respectable Chinaman in the case of mourning, that he will even abstain from chewing betel-nut, because it would make his lips red, and red is emblematical of joy.

See the Lun-yü, bk. xvii., ch. 7.

tortoise-shell and jade are occasionally used in elaborating the handles of the more expensive kinds. White silk, stretched tightly over both sides of a narrow frame, round, octagonal, sexagonal, or polygonal, as the case may be, forms what is considered in the higher circles of Chinese society the ne plus ultra of elegance and refinement; especially so when some charming study in flower or landscape painting on the obverse is accompanied by a sparkling stanza on the reverse, signed by the writer and addressed to the friend for whose delectation it is intended. This is a very favorite present among the Chinese; and as poets and painters are but a small minority in China, as elsewhere, it follows that any man who is sufficiently an artist to supply either the verses or the design need never starve for want of occupation. One of the highest officials and most renowned calligraphists in the Chinese Empire at the present moment, when formerly a struggling student at Foochow, eked out a scanty livelihood by writing inscriptions for fans in all kinds of styles, ancient and modern, at about one shilling and eightpence per fan. Outside his door was a notice calling the attention of the public to the above fact, and the fancy name he gave to his studio was 'Laugh, but Buy.'

That kind known as the 'Swatow' fan is for a non-folding fan perhaps the most serviceable of all, as for lightness and durability combined it is certainly without a rival. It is formed from a piece of bamboo, about 1 foot in length and half an inch in diameter, split two-thirds of the way down into a number of slips, each very thin and apparently fragile, while really possessed of its full share of the strength and flexibility of the parent stem. These slips are spread out in the same plane, with their tips slightly bent over, somewhat like a mustard spoon; and then strong paper is pasted over the whole as far down as the splits extend, the remaining unsplit half serving as handle. This fan is said to be actually made near Amoy, probably near Chang-chow, and to be sent to Swatow only to be painted; but to foreigners resident in China it is universally known as the 'Swatow' fan. Of all fancy fans there is none so cu

rious as what is commonly termed the broken fan,' which at first sight would appear to be a simple folding fan, and on being opened from left to right as usual discloses nothing to distinguish it from the most ordinary kind. Opened, however, the reverse way, from right to left, the whole fan seems to have fallen to pieces, each bone, with the part attached to it, being separated from all the others, as if the connecting strings were broken. This arrangement is of course simple enough, but at first sight the effect, as a trick, is remarkably good. From the broken it is an easy transition to the secret or double-entendre fan, which opened one way shows a flower or similarly harmless design; the other, some ribald sketch which with us would entail severe penalties on maker, publisher, and all concerned. It is only fair, however, to the administration of China to state that, theoretically speaking, the same penalties would be incurred, though practically they are seldom if ever enforced. In the Peking form of this fan there are always two such pictures to each. These are not seen when the fan is opened out, and it will only open one way; but are disclosed by turning back the two end ribs or bones.' A far more creditable and more useful compagnon de voyage is the map fan, which gives the plan of some such great city as Peking or Canton, with the names of the streets and public buildings marked in characters of medium legibility. Sometimes whole districts are included on the surface of a fan; and as the distances from place to place are given with considerable accuracy, travellers not unusually invest the small sums required for the purchase of these topographical guides. So, too, any great national event may be circulated over the Empire by means of fans, precisely as penny books of the Lord Mayor's Show are still sold in Fleet Street on every November 9. The Tientsin Massacre, for instance, brought forth a hideous specimen, with horrid details of the hacking to pieces of Roman Catholic priests and sisters, the burning of the cathedral and of the French consulate, the murder of the French Consul and his chancelier. The sale of these fans was almost immediately prohibited by the Chinese authorities, and they are now very rare.