The "Fan Kwae" at Canton before Treaty Days, 1825-1814. By
an Old Resident. (Kagan Paul.)—The " Old Resident's" gossip is distinctly entertaining. He takes us back to a time, only forty years ago, when the world seemed ten times larger than it is now, when one-half of it was shrouded in mystery, leaving so much more room for the imagination to work, when it took four months to go from England to China, and when life in general was lived on the same leisurely scale. His sketches of the life of the "Fan Kwae " (" Foreign Devils ") in Canton and Macao in these pleasant old days are quite unpretentious, but very attractive, and make one long for a year of the leisurely life now gone for ever. The relations between the foreigner and the Chinese were, as a rule, perfectly amicable ; both seem to have conducted their busi- ness in a strictly honourable manner, though no binding docu- ments passed between them, and both realised enormous fortunes. The sketches of some of the native merchants are highly to their credit, though we fear that since the ports were opened, both they and the foreigners have deteriorated. There is a portrait given of Houqua, the leading Chinese merchant in the author's time, a man of genuine kindliness of heart and princely liberality, whose fortune was calculated at something like five million pounds sterling. He would think nothing of writing off a debt of 700,000 dollars to oblige an "olo flea" ("old friend"), or giving a sub- scription of a million to some public object. Merchants, native and foreign (the author is an American), compradores, mandarins, skippers, clerks, money-changers, and many other functionaries appear in our author's pages, which we commend to any one in search of a soothing hour or two's reading.
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