powerful scene he condemns Agnes, the woman he had ruined and betrayed, for the murder of his child. At the time, the novel succeeded by appealing dramatically to the spirit which permeated a large section of society. But as a whole it is inferior to 'A Simple Story.' The novels both of Godwin and Mrs. Inchbald are pitched in a higher key than those of their predecessors. They appeal less to sentiment than to passion; they deal with wild scenes of strong emotion; paint dark pictures of sin and remorse, portray life not on its every-day side, but in its romantic aspect. They led the way for Lord Lytton and Charlotte Brontë. The obligations which the former owed both to Godwin and Mrs. Inchbald were considerable. 'A Strange Story' resembles in some of its outlines 'St. Leon;' Godwin at one time meditated writing a novel on ‘Eugene Aram,' and possibly suggested the subject to Lytton, who was an intimate friend of the then aged novelist. If this be so, it is more than a coincidence that the name of the murdered man in 'Caleb Williams' is given to Sir James Tyrrel, whose murder on Newmarket Heath is described with such graphic force in 'Pelham.' The trial and condemnation of Agnes in Nature and Art' so strikingly resembles the impressive scene in 'Paul Clifford,' where Brandon condemns his son, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion, that Lytton owed the suggestion to Mrs. Inchbald. The growth of the English novel in the eighteenth century epitomizes the characteristics of the period. It follows the change from the prose of its commencement to the poetry of its conclusion. In the realism of Defoe is represented the extreme of its reaction against the enthusiasm of religion, literature, and politics, whether chivalrous or republican. From the fatal effects of that sentimental disease which infected Richardson, England was saved by the sturdy common-sense of men like Fielding, and the domestic virtues that are painted by Goldsmith. As the century drew to its close, the pent-up imagination, which here and there had trickled off in Della-Cruscan dilettanteism, finally burst its bonds, and flowed into new channels of historical romance, or moral, social, and political idealisms. If in its general outlines the novel represented the age, with still closer fidelity did it reflect its minute details. Life is presented in every aspect; vivid side-lights fall upon manners and morals: from the thieves' quarter to Almacks no class is omitted. Never before was society so dramatically presented; of no previous age do we possess a knowledge at once SO detailed and so general; in none exists so rich a gallery of contemporary portraits. As As the century advanced to its close, novels increased in power and in compass. To bare realism of facts were added the minute, concrete, or analytical presentation of character; graces of style, careful construction of plots, humour-whether of the broad, farcical, or subtle kind-pathos both rude and tender, imagination, natural description, the fiery poetry and the glow of passion. Men brought to bear their masculine vigour, women their penetrating observation, upon the elaboration of the novel. Yet the instrument was not perfected. Even the novel of social and real life, on which the best intellects were concentrated, was incomplete. The real life of Fielding was real enough, but it was not the every-day world of Miss Austen; Sterne's group of oddities had still to be shaded off, as in nature, by more common-place characters; the mimicry of Miss Burney overlooked the minute details of society by which women discriminate their own sex. New strings remained to be added. The full power of the novel of passion and of incident was undeveloped; the historical novel was untried; polemical romance was yet to be pushed in many and opposite directions. What an influence for good and evil have novelists become! Keen, sarcastic critics of life, genial partakers of its interests, observant students of its hopes and failures, they have imagined stories that strike a chord which vibrates for a lifetime, painted pictures of life-struggles and their issues which indelibly brand themselves on the memory, or, with an insight that is born of intuition or experience, laid bare the inmost secrets of the human heart. They have formed conceptions so lofty as to be everlasting possessions, and created characters that are compliments to human nature. As the keen scimitar and nervous arm of Saladin accomplished a feat which the giant strength and ponderous blade of Richard could not perform, so novelists have enforced moral lessons more powerful than a wilderness of homilists, and taught effectively by parables where other teaching has produced only slumber. ART. ART. III.-1. Wanderings in China. By C. F. Gordon 2. The Sacred Books of China. Translated by James Legge. 4 vols. Oxford, 1879, 1882, 1885. 3. Papers relating to Indo-China. 2 vols. London, 1886. 4. Chinese Buddhism. By the Rev. Joseph Edkins. London, 1886. T is difficult now to take up a newspaper without finding in to the great Empire of Eastern Asia, which even ten years ago would have startled any one familiar with the Far East. China, with its vast extent of territory, stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the Tropics, from Siberia to Tonquin, and from the sea of Japan to the Indus, with its enormous population, its unbroken history of about three thousand years, its ancient and stereotyped civilization, its apparent contempt for all the boasted discoveries and improvements of the nineteenth century, its dislike of contact with nations outside its own borders, has been popularly regarded as the most striking example of the changeless character of the East. And it must be confessed, that there are abundant incidents in the history of European intercourse with China to support this view. Contact with the West since the seventeenth century, and especially since the war with England in 1841, appeared to have made no impression whatever on the Chinese rulers and people; the effect of several wars seemed to be that they shrank more within themselves and away from us, and that, while reluctantly suffering us to enjoy those rights or privileges which we had extorted at the cannon's mouth, they desired to have no further intercourse with us, and no part in our policy or civilization. Bigotry, obstinacy, and idiotic pride, were believed to be the main characteristics of the Chinese Government; the country, it was acknowledged, was populous and fertile, the people ingenious and interesting, their literature and philosophy of the highest type, but, as a nation, they were believed to be weak and timid, and as a fighting power to be beneath contempt. One high authority in 1860 said he would undertake to fight his way through the length and breadth of China with only fifty armed men; and Lord Elgin, one of the loftiest characters that ever served his country in the East, spoke in a public despatch on one occasion of being compelled to appeal again to that ignoble passion of fear which was unhappily the one primum mobile of human action in China.' Yet Yet when we look around us to-day, what attitude and what position do we find taken by this unwarlike, weak, bigoted, almost contemptible people towards the West, and amongst the nations of the world? China has her envoys in the capitals of Europe, her youth are studying in our schools, our shipbuilding yards and arsenals are busy supplying her demands. She is now felt to be a power in Asia which must be reckoned with, and whose interests and demands cannot be disregarded. She has just emerged with power and credit from a struggle with one of the principal military nations in the world; an English Prime Minister, on a public occasion, has congratulated his countrymen, that in an important work on which we are engaged we have the friendliness and goodwill of China. Telegraphs now extend for thousands of miles over the country where five years ago there were not ten miles of electric wire, and the representatives of several nations are contending at Pekin for the privilege of assisting the Chinese in constructing a network of railways where now there is not a single mile of line. The change, it will be perceived, is not confined to the position of China in the eyes of the world: that has been very great, for she is now regarded as powerful where formerly she was thought weak and contemptible; it also extends to the attitude of the Chinese themselves towards us. They no longer proudly and timidly hold aloof from other nations; they have recognized to some extent their place in the world, and have taken it. Hereupon arises the question: Whence this revolution? How comes it that China has suddenly, in the course of a few years, ten years at the outside,-thrown aside her ancient policy, and in a measure ranged herself in line with the nations of the earth? It is proposed in the present article to answer this question, to describe the causes, course, and results, so far as they have been developed up to the present, of this change. The enquiry is one of special interest to Englishmen, on political as well as commercial grounds. China is our nearest neighbour in Asia; her frontier almost adjoins our own from Burma to Cashmere. She is one of our principal customers, and our trade with her is greater than that of all the rest of the world put together. There is also a special, and more personal, reason why the present is a suitable time for this survey. We are just about to lose the high official who has represented China in this country for seven years, and to whom perhaps more than to any other person is due the new policy which China has adopted. The period of service of the Marquis Tsêng in Europe is coincident with the breaking up of the policy of isolation and distrust; largely by his advice, and under under his guidance, China has emerged from her seclusion, and he has played a leading part in most of the events upon which we shall have to comment. He has been the principal exponent and representative of what may be called the new spirit in China; a spirit which recognizes, that persistence in the policy of seclusion means disaster, and that, in the modern struggle for territorial integrity and national existence, China must come forward and maintain her position in the world by the diplomatic and other methods by which Western nations protect themselves. In the preface to his brilliant and instructive work, 'Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan,' Mr. Laurence Oliphant refers to the case of the lorcha 'Arrow as mainly owing its importance to the accidental circumstance, that it was the remote and insignificant cause which led to a total revolution in the foreign policy of the Celestial Empire. It is undoubtedly true that the seizure of the 'Arrow' at Canton in 1856, leading as it ultimately did to two wars, to the treaties of Tientsin with Great Britain and France in 1858, to the extension of facilities for trade with China, and to the residence of foreign envoys in Pekin, was an event of the first importance in the history of European intercourse with China. But it is scarcely correct to say that it led to a revolution in the foreign policy of China. It brought about a vast change in the position in which China stood to the West; but the old policy of exclusion, of diminishing as far as possible the points of contact with Europeans, of jealousy, hostility and distrust, remained as active and powerful as ever. By the occupation of Pekin and the destruction of the Summer Palace, the Chinese had been taught that they were not yet able to cope in material power with Western nations, and that breaches of the treaties which had been made would be punished with a heavy hand; but these occurrences did not teach them the lesson, that foreign intercourse, or the entry of China into the family of nations, was a wise or desirable policy to pursue. By a fortunate coup d'état towards the close of 1861, the reins of power in China fell for more than twenty years into the hands of Prince Kung, a cautious and moderate statesman, who recognized that the best policy was to observe the provisions of the treaties, not because he thought this good in itself for the country, but because he knew that China was not able to resist the force that could and would be applied in case of necessity. He was, no doubt, a safe guide in the stormy and transition period through which his country was passing. He understood the strength of his opponents, but he did not love them any the more on that F 2 account; |