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town and it has not yet perhaps reached its maximum value, though it has more than doubled, and trebled, in some instances.
The climate, contrary to what was predicted by many, is found to be healthy, the extremes of heat and cold varying fom 120° in summer to 12° in winter. Among the foreigners there has been very little sickness. Up to the present time, there is in the cemetery only one grave covering the remains of a foreign resident.
The population of Shanghái has been supposed to range between three and four hundred thousand. This is doubtless as near the truth as it is possible for the foreigner at present to arrive. The character of these people has been variously described, extolled by some, depreciated by others. That they are true Chinese, in all the leading features of character-physical, intellectual, moral, &c. is plain enough. But whether, taking them all in all, they are superior or inferior to their countrymen in other parts of the empire, we are not prepared to say. The population here is a mixed, migratory one, perhaps not one half of those now resident having been born and bred in this city, The indigenous part of the community seem gentle, industrious, and, some would add, stupid. "When a fo- reigner at any of the northern ports goes into a shop," says Mr. Fortune, "the whole place inside and outside is immediately crowd- ed with Chinese, who gaze at him with a sort of stupid dreaming eye; and it is difficult to say whether they really see him or not, or whether they have been drawn there by some strange mesmeric in- fluence, over which they have no control and I am quite sure that, were it possible for the stranger to slip out of his clothes and leave a block standing in his place, the Chinese would still continue to gaze on and never know the difference." He adds however that there are some very different from those here described, some that are active and energetic. They are indeed so; and yet the picture he has given answers perfectly to what we have often witnessed. Nor is it strange they do appear thus dull aud dreamy, shut up and shut out as they have been, bound down to things sensual and devilish by all the thousand deadly influences of paganism immemorial. His picture is not over-drawn; nor in fact does it give us the whole truth, or shades so dark as the reality. The truth is, the whole na- tion is asleep; morally dead: the emperor, ministers, the governors, the magistrates, and the people are all spell-bound by the deadening and soul-destroying reign of Paganism.
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As a missionary field Shanghái has very strong claims on the in- habitants of Christendom: a field that will give unbounded scope