in the crowded street, or the hot
room, well suddenly up in their hearts like a fresh stream, or pass
across their cheeks like a breath of mountain air.

Depend upon it, we lose much humanising feeling, much true refinement,
much of the poetry of life, in parting with the roughness of our
Summer Lodgings.

PAPER-MONEY AND BANKING IN CHINA.

The origin or prototype of so many of our European arts and customs
has been found in the 'central flowery land,' that it is not
surprising to hear of the Chinese having begun to use paper-money as
currency in the second century preceding the Christian era. At that
time, the coinage of the Celestials was of a more bulky and ponderous
nature than it is at the present day; and we may easily believe that a
people so cunning and ingenious, would contrive not a few schemes to
avoid the burden of carrying it about; as the man did, who scratched
the figure of an ox on a piece of leather, and went from door to door
with that until he had found a customer, leaving the animal, meantime,
at home in the stall. There was a deficiency, too, in the ways and
means of the government: money was never plentiful enough in the
imperial coffers. At last, to get out of the difficulty, it was
determined to try the effect of a paper-currency, and an issue was
made of assignats or treasury-warrants, which, being based on the
credit of the highest authorities, were regarded as secure; which
fact, with their facility of transfer, soon brought them into
circulation. Of course, a good deal of legislation was expended on the
measure, before it could be got to work satisfactorily, and it
underwent many fluctuations in its progress towards permanence. The
intestine wars to which China was exposed at that period, by
overturning dynasty after dynasty, led one government to disavow the
obligations of its predecessor, and the natural consequences of bad
faith followed. After circulating with more or less success for five
hundred years, the government paper-money disappeared.

This happened under the Ming dynasty: the Manchus, who succeeded,
gave themselves no trouble to restore the paper-currency; on which the
trading portion of the community took the matter into their own hands,
and by the time that their Tatar conquerors were quietly settled in
their usurped authority, the merchants had revived the use of paper.
They were too sensible of its great utility not to make the attempt;
and since that time, they