s beginning to shine on it by means of an
enlightened prince.

Siam, as our readers know, is an important kingdom situated between
the Burman Empire on the one hand, and Cochin-China on the other. It
abounds in natural resources, but exports only sugar, spices, drugs,
and lead, and these only in comparatively small quantity; yet it has
gold enough to make pavements for the sacred white elephants, and to
throw down into the unfathomed abyss in the Cavern of the Sun. Of
antimony, there are stores sufficient to render lustrous the eyes of
the black-teethed beauties of Siam; while silver, iron, copper, lead,
and fuel, are known to abound in these favoured regions. Yet with all
these local advantages, it is nearly certain that we could, in spite
of the distance, successfully compete with the productions of copper
and iron in their own markets, because we have applied science to
their extraction and preparation.

Siam, like nations nearer home, is very proud of its own industry, and
of its position among the states of the earth; and it may well be,
seeing that its king is hereditary lord of the stars, and gives them
permission to move in their orbits. The presumptive heir to the stars
thought one day he would like to know what Europeans believed of his
celestial powers, so he studied mathematics and astronomy from English
books, afterwards extending his knowledge to navigation, to the
natural sciences, and to English literature. Prince Chow Faa, who has,
since April 1851, succeeded his sensual and ignorant brother, under
the new appellation of King Somdet Phra Chom Klow, found his knowledge
of science thus acquired a prodigious power in the improvement of his
future terrestrial kingdom, although his celestial possessions
vanished at the same time. Like Prince Henry of Portugal, the Siamese
prince believed that the only princely talent worth cultivating, was
'the talent to do good;' and under his mental vigour, this distant
kingdom began to develop in a wonderful manner. Like Peter the Great,
he founded dockyards, and built ships of war equal to first-class
English vessels, navigating them, not by eyes painted in front, as of
old, but by chronometers and Greenwich tables. He introduced European
discipline into the army, and taught it how to use artillery. He
obtained miners of talent to examine into his mines, and the mode of
working in them; but in his reforms he awakened the jealousy of the
king and of the priesthood, and