exclaimed another; "Just life-like!" said they in a chorus, as I lifted up the picture to show it to them when there was a sudden change of scene. A woman with staring eyes and as pale as death appeared on the doorstep of a house close by, and holding her forehead with her hand, as if a great calamity was to befall her, made a step forward. "Where is my child?" cried she in a voice of anger and despair. "Here he is," answered one of the crowd. "The foreigner is painting him." or a green hood, very similar in shape to the one worn by the women at Malta. Their dress is somewhat peculiar and deserves to be described. They wear huge trousers padded up inside with cotton wool, and socks similarly padded, which are fastened tight round the ankles to the trousers. Over these is a shortish skirt tied very high over the waist; and a tiny jacket, generally white, red, or green, completes the wardrobe of most Corean women, one peculiarity about this jacket being that it is so short that both breasts are left uncovered, which is a curious and most unpractical fashion, the climate of Corea being colder than that of Canada. The hair is very simply made up, plastered down and tied into a knot at the back of the head. A silver pin or two There was a piercing yell and the pale woman looked such daggers at me that I nearly dropped the sketch, brushes, and palette out of my hands, then with another yell, even more piercing than the first, she made a are sometimes worn in it as an ornadash into the crowd and tried to snatchment. the child away. However, she was not Young girls and old women often successful in her attempt, for my audi- wear a curious fur cap. It has a hole ence had got so interested in the pic- in the centre and two long silk ribbons ture that they would not hear of letting at the back. It has the shape of a secthe child go; but the unfortunate part tion of a cone, and when smartly worn of all this was, that the angry mother it is becoming. As for the men the was pulling the child by the head and national dress is rather artistic-looking. one arm trying to drag him away, while When I visited Corea the whole kingthe people on the other side were pull-dom was in mourning for the death of ing him as hard as they could by the the queen-dowager, therefore everyother arm and the legs, so that the body had to wear white. Huge white poor, screaming mite was nearly torn trousers, a short jacket with long silk to pieces, and no remonstrating on my ribbons in front, and twisted paper sanside had any effect on this tug-of-war. | Fortunately for the child the mother let go; but it was certainly not fortunate for the others, for following the little ways that women have, even in Corea, she proceeded to scratch the faces of all that were within reach, and I myself came within an inch of having my eyes scratched out of my head by this infuriated parent, when to my tortoiseshell ornament is fastened to great relief they took her away. As she re-entered the door she shook her fist and thrust out her tongue at me. Women, however, are not all like that in Corea; in fact, most of them are charming and often good-looking, though it is rarely that one has a chance of seeing them. They are kept almost in seclusion, and when they go out they cover their face with a white dals, is the general attire in which one sees most people in the streets. The head dressing is what the Coreans attach more importance to. A headband is fastened tight round the hair, which has previously been tied into a knot on the top of the head, and a small silver or metal ball is attached at the end of this knot. Occasionally a the hair over the forehead, and a curiously shaped and transparent horsehair hat, reminding one of the Welsh hat, is invariably worn both in the house and out. Taking off one's hat when you enter a house in Corea is about the rudest thing one could do; just the same as in Japan it is considered polite to take off one's boots when entering a house. Again, deco 1 1 rations are worn by officials behind the | there is a regular oven, called kan, in The palace grounds are rather pretty, and in a small pavilion on the lake the king spends some of his very few hours of leisure in summer. When the king goes for a day out of Coreans are not much given to wash- the palace grounds, it is a great event ing, and less still to bathing. They in Seoul; the troops are summoned up, wash their hands fairly often, and occa- and line each side of the road leading sionally the face; the better people to the palace. It is indeed a strange wash it almost daily. Corean houses sight to see, in these days, soldiers are generally small, and the rooms of in armor and carrying old-fashioned diminutive size. The most curious spears, and with their wide-awake point about them is that the flooring is black hats with a long red tassel hangmade of stone covered with oil-paper, ing down on the shoulders; but and that under the stone flooring stranger still they look in rainy weather, when a small fastened over the hat. umbrella is their pronunciation of foreign tongues The cavalry is infinitely better than that of their soldiers still retain their old uniforms, neighbors the Chinese or the Japanese. I can give an instance of a Mr. Chang, who was appointed interpreter to Mr. C. R. Greathouse, the vice-minister of home affairs in Corea, and foreign adviser to the king, and who, in less than two months, learned English well enough to speak and understand per while the infantry have a sort of semiEuropean costume which is quite comical to look at. The infantry have guns of all sorts, ages, and descriptions, from old flint locks to repeating breechloaders, and I have often thought of the difficulty of training soldiers, no two of them having similar guns. A fectly. I have seen him learn by heart couple of American army instructors out of a dictionary as many as two were employed by the king to coach the hundred English words in a day, and, soldiery in the art of war and teach what is more, remember every one of them the use of foreign weapons, but, them, including the spelling. Only if I remember right, one of the great- once did I hear him make a comical est difficulties they had to contend with mistake. He had not quite grasped was the discipline, to which the easy- the meaning of the word "twin," and, going Coreans would not lend them- answering a question I had asked him, selves. They were brave enough when "Yes, sir," said he, “I have a twin it came to fighting-especially in brother who is three years older than I fighting their own way - but it was am. difficult to make them understand that when a man is a soldier he is no more a man, but a machine. "Why, then, not have machines altogether?" was pretty much what the soldiers thought when they were compelled to go through the, to them, apparently useless and tiresome drilling. The target practice amused and interested them much, but it seldom took place, as the ammunition was found to be too great an expense; and though nearly each infantry soldier possessed a gun, he hardly ever had a chance of firing it, so much so that when a gun had to be fired in the capital the king invariably sent a message round to the few foreigners in the town requesting them not to be frightened or alarmed at the "report," for it was not a revolution that had burst out, but only a blank cartridge being fired for some purpose or other! A. HENRY SAVAGE-LANDOR. From Macmillan's Magazine. THE POST-OFFICE PACKETS. A FORGOTTEN CHAPTER IN NAVAL HIS TORY. FEW nations can afford to forget their past history, and England, of all others, whose power is so deeply rooted in sea-fights, should not be careless of her naval records. After many generations of almost ceaseless warfare, there has been a long breathingtime of peace, an interval which could not be better spent than in collecting and recording the actions of those brave men whose struggles ensured our ease, and preserving them for our own benefit as well as for that of posterity. This has been done of course long since as regards the great seaThe Coreans, it must be understood, battles, and most even of the lesser are lazy and depressed, but they are by fights in which the ships of the royal no means stupid. I have come across navy were engaged have been suffipeople there who would be thought ciently described. But there remains marvellously clever in any civilized a service, distinguished over and over country; and when they wish to learn again, an ancient service, highly useful anything, they are wonderfully quick to the public and associated with a at understanding even matters of great department of State, whose hiswhich they have never heard before. tory has been left untouched till all the Languages come easy to them, and officers connected with it have passed away, and the personal recollections | tell briefly how the packets conducted which are the life-blood of such a themselves during two years of the record are irretrievably lost to us | American war of 1812-1815. namely, the Post-Office Packet Service. Probably few people are aware that the general post-office for more than a century and a half maintained a fleet of some fifty or sixty armed ships. There were stations for these vessels at Dover and Harwich (and sometimes at Yarmouth) for the mails to France, Holland, and the north of Europe, at Holyhead and Milford for the Irish Channel. But the chief station was at Falmouth; and it is with the Falmouth packets only, as bearing the brunt of the fighting, that the present article is concerned. During this war the Falmouth packets fought no less than thirty-two actions with American privateers. Seventeen of these were entirely successful, while of the remainder it is not too much to say that some of the defeats were as glorious as any victory. There was no one of these fights in which the postoffice vessel was not heavily outmatched both in men and guns; for the American privateers were the most complete of their kind, and no one among them would have put to sea without an armament far exceeding that which the postmaster-general provided for the packets. There were packets at Falmouth solely under post-office control from The war broke out in June, 1812. 1688 to 1823. They carried the mails In September the Princess Amelia, at first to Spain and Portugal alone; but early in the last century the trade with the American colonies increased so far as to render regular communication with them necessary, and extra packets were accordingly established at Falmouth to ply to the West Indies and to New York. Throughout the wars of the last century and the early years of this, the Falmouth packets steered their steady course. Lightly armed, and carrying no more men than were absolutely necessary to work the ship and to fight her if need be, they sought no enemy; but if any came in their path, they faced her without flinching, and fought for the honor of their flag, the credit of their service, and the safety of their mails and pas-man in the ship had been hit, and the sengers. How well the Falmouth men fought might be shown by details taken from almost any period of their history; but it will be best to select those years in which the packet service was in its fullest vigor, when the packets were most numerous, when they were armed more appropriately than at any other period, and when they were called on to face enemies of the same blood and traditions as themselves. This was the period of their greatest trial; and as it was also that of their greatest distinction, it will be enough at present to Captain Moorsom, carrying twentyeight men and boys, with six sixpounders and two nine-pounders, was attacked by the privateer Rossie, which had a crew of ninety-five picked men, and an armament of ten twelvepounders, besides a long nine-pounder mounted on a traverse amidships. Captain Moorsom came of a family of sailors, and knew well how to defend his ship. The details of the fight are lost to us, but we know that at the end of fifty minutes Captain Moorsom, his master, and a boy were dead, the mate (next in seniority to the captain and master) was most severely wounded, and ten ordinary sailors had been carried off the deck. Thus every other remnant being quite insufficient to work and fight the vessel, no alternative remained but a surrender, in which there was assuredly no disgrace. In November of the same year a fight upon a greater scale took place. Rightly praised in the official records. for its extraordinary gallantry, it deserved a better fate than the oblivion to which, with only two or three exceptions, the actions of the packets have been consigned. packet, Captain The Townsend James Cock, was armed somewhat more heavily than the Princess Amelia, having on board eight nine-pounder | which the little crew of Cornishmen carronades, with a long gun of similar was reduced by four, disabled from calibre used as a chaser. Her crew their wounds; and the cannonade was also was slightly larger, numbering resumed. Then for another hour the twenty-eight men and four boys. She Townsend lay beneath the fire of her was within a few hours of dropping enemy's heavy guns, the courage of her anchor at Bridgetown, Barbados, her crew as high as ever. She was when the first light of the 23rd of No- now so much shattered that she could vember revealed two strange vessels with difficulty be handled. Again and cruising in company at no great dis- again the Tom bore down upon the tance. These vessels proved to be two disabled packet, and hurled her boardAmerican privateers, the Tom, Captain ers into her. Time after time the Thomas Wilson, and the Bona, Captain Americans were driven back, though Damaron. The former was armed with men fell rapidly. Mr. Sidgman, the fourteen carronades, some eighteen master, was killed, and six more of the and some twelve-pounders, as well as crew were desperately wounded. This two long nine-pounders, and carried could not last. Captain Cock endeavone hundred and thirty men. The lat- ored to run his ship ashore, but the ter had six eighteen-pounders, with a effort was frustrated. Ere long the long twenty-four-pounder mounted on Townsend was a mere wreck. Her a traverse, and carried ninety men. bowsprit was shot in pieces; both jibThe forces on each side were therefore booms and head were carried away, as as follows, assuming that the Tom car- well as the wheel and ropes; scarcely ried as many eighteen as twelve pound- one shroud was left standing, aud round the helpless wreck the Americans sailed, choosing their positions as they pleased, and raking her again and again. Still the Cornishmen lay at bay. It was not till ten o'clock that Captain Cock, looking round him, saw means of further resistance. There were four feet of water in the hold; nearly half his crew were in the hands of the surgeon; the lives of the others must be saved. Still his pride rebelled against surrender, and as he saw the colors he had defended so well drop down upon the deck it is recorded that he burst into tears. ers. Weight of Metal in pounds. 78 Number of Men. 220 Moreover, this great disparity of force was divided between two assailants. Rarely, perhaps, has an action begun in such hopeless circumstances. no It Captain Cock meant to fight, however, and did not trouble his head about disparity of force. All his preparations were completed before the privateers came within range, which they did about 7 A.M. At 7.30 the Tom had placed herself abeam of the packet to There lies before the writer a faded larboard, while the Bona lay on the yellow scrap of paper on which one of starboard quarter, and both their broad- the American captains recorded in gensides were crashing into the Townsend erous terms his opinion of his foe. at pistol-shot distance, all three vessels runs as follows: "I do certify that running before the wind. This lasted Captain James Cock, of the packet brig till eight o'clock, when the rigging of Townsend, captured this day by the the Townsend was so much cut up that private armed schooners Tom and her sails were hanging in every direc- | Bona, did defend his ship with courage tion ; and in some momentary confu- and seamanship, and that he did not sion from this cause the Tom seized an strike his colors until his vessel was opportunity of pouring in her boarders, perfectly unmanageable and in the while the Bona redoubled her fire act of sinking. Thos. Wilson, on both of great guns and musketry to board the Townsend, November 22, cover their attack. The boarders were 1812." driven back after a fierce tussle, in One of the privateers was so shat |