Chinese priests should pass, by short voyages, from island to island, almost over the proposed Russian route for the Pacific telegraph to America.  That they did so is explicitly stated in the Year Books, which contain details relative to Fusang, or Mexico, where it is said of the inhabitants that ’in earlier times these people lived not according to the laws of Buddha.  But it happened in the second “year-naming” “Great Light” of Song (A.D. 458), that five beggar monks, from the kingdom Kipin, went to this land, extended over it the religion of Buddha, and with it his holy writings and images.  They instructed the people in the principles of monastic life, and so changed their manners.’

But I am anticipating my subject.  In another chapter I propose, on the authority of Professor Neumann, a learned Sinologist of Munich, to set forth the proofs that in the last year of the fifth century a Buddhist priest, bearing the cloister name of Hoei-schin, or Universal Compassion, returned from America, and gave for the first time an official account of the country which he had visited, which account was recorded, and now remains as a simple fact among the annual registers of the government.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

* * * * *

THE SPUR OF MONMOUTH.

  ’Twas a little brass half-circlet,
    Deep gnawed by rust and stain,
  That the farmer’s urchin brought me,
    Plowed up on old Monmouth plain;
  On that spot where the hot June sunshine
    Once a fire more deadly knew,
  And a bloodier color reddened
    Where the red June roses blew;—­

  Where the moon of the early harvest
    Looked down through the shimmering leaves,
  And saw where the reaper of battle
    Had gathered big human sheaves. 
  Old Monmouth, so touched with glory—­
    So tinted with burning shame—­
  As Washington’s pride we remember,
    Or Lee’s long tarnished name.

  ’Twas a little brass half-circlet;
    And knocking the rust away,
  And clearing the ends and the middle
    From their buried shroud of clay,
  I saw, through the damp of ages
    And the thick disfiguring grime,
  The buckle-heads and the rowel
    Of a spur of the olden time.

  And I said—­what gallant horseman,
    Who revels and rides no more,
  Perhaps twenty years back, or fifty,
    On his heel that weapon wore? 
  Was he riding away to his bridal,
    When the leather snapped in twain? 
  Was he thrown and dragged by the stirrup,
    With the rough stones crushing his brain?

  Then I thought of the Revolution,
    Whose tide still onward rolls—­
  Of the free and the fearless riders
    Of the ‘times that tried men’s souls.’ 
  What if, in the day of battle
    That raged and rioted here,
  It had dropped from the foot of a soldier,
    As he rode in his mad career?