consecrated to the memory of the dead; whither in spring and autumn the surviving descendants repair to perform their devotions, proceeding afterwards in a body to the grave to offer victuals, candles, flowers, and incense.

In this slight sketch it will be seen that we have not attempted to go into details (which will be found both full and entertaining in Davis), but have merely selected from various authors such salient points as appeared likely to lead to a correct estimate of the character of the people.* If we have executed this task as we intended, the reader will be able to draw the corollary for himself. He has seen a mixture of good and bad, of greatness and meanness, of sound sense and frivolity: but all that he would have seen, though possibly not to the same degree, in an examination of any other country in the world. The risk is that he will try those characteristics by a European standard, and thus utterly fail in his object. Some writers laud the Chinese as paragons of virtue because they revere their parents; and some stigmatise them as semi-barbarians (a favourite term of the Protestant missionaries), because they burn incense to their ancestors. They are neither one nor other. Many, again, compare their position with that of Europeans a certain number of centuries ago but nothing can be more hopelessly erroneous. The progress of Chinese civilization, and the circumstances that acted upon it, have been wholly different from those of the western world, and it would be vain to look for a similarity at any epoch whatever.

* In some cases we have considered Gutzlaff a better authority than Davis, in so far as superficial facts are concerned; the former having resided long in the interior, where he became a naturalized citizen of the empire, and was received as a member into one of the clans, while the latter, though a more careful thinker, appears more frequently to have drawn his information from books,

The ignorance of Europe was characterized by a brutality which is entirely unknown in China; and, besides this, it was ignorance of a totally different kind. The great mass of Europeans were ignorant of literature and science as they existed in their own day; while the great mass of the Chinese are well instructed in all the knowledge, imperfect as it may be, of their time. In Europe the lower classes could neither read nor write, and a large proportion of the upper classes were in the same predicament; while education, to that extent at least, was—and is—more general in China than in any other country in the world, with the sole exception of Japan. As yet our acquaintance with the Chinese is pretty nearly confined to the rabble of a great city, the outpost of the country in what may be termed its defence against the advance of the western nations. This rabble has been brought up from the cradle in hatred and contempt of Europeans, who were excluded, by authority, from the benefit of the ceremonial law. All the arts and all the power of the government have been employed in erecting a moral barrier against us. The Centre of the world was aware that it had been subdued by a handful of Tartars; and it had heard that the British, the richest and most clamorous of those foreign barbarians who repaired to the gates of Canton to sue for permission to trade, had, under the very same pretexts, overrun the Mogul empire. It was necessary, therefore, to exclude the whole European race from the Flowery Land; but in the mode of doing so a strange peculiarity of Chinese ignorance betrayed itself. The government resolved that it would not discover the strangers to be anything else than paltry and ignorant barbarians; and, like the bird which, when pursued, hides its head in the sand, fancied itself secure so long as the blindness continued!

If, in referring to earlier Europe, we suppose that the imperfect knowledge, and the comparative refinement and tranquillity of character enclosed in the convents was generally diffused throughout society, we may facilitate by that means our conception of the moral position at present held by the Chinese; but in no other way can the comparison serve any other purpose than to bewilder and mislead.

BOOK VIII.

THE CHINESE EMPIRE - ITS INTERNAL RESOURCES AND FOREIGN RELATIONS.-THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN.

CHAPTER I.

PRODUCTIONS AND RESOURCES OF CHINA.

If we consider that the Chinese empire contains onethird part of the human race, living in a high state of civilization, and yet almost wholly independent of foreign commerce, we must conclude that the country in its productions and resources is one of the most admirable in the world. But, at the same time, it should not be forgotten that the people are wonderfully parsimonious in their use of the means of subsistence, and that they accept without repugnance as food many of the gifts of nature, which elsewhere excite only curiosity or disgust. It may be a question whether the appetite that rejects with loathing the flesh of a cat or a rat, and luxuriates on that of other animals infinitely more uncleanly in their habits, is not guided more by prejudice than reason; but still this philosophical taste of the Chinese, when taken

in conjunction with their general preference for the flavour which attends decomposition and decay, would seem to indicate some peculiarity in their organization. At any rate the fact is important, as extending to its utmost limit of elasticity the line with which nature confines the movement of population; and it will account for that outburst of colonization, in defiance of the laws of the empire, which has been already pointed out as so well calculated to excite interest and expectation.

In a country so well cleared as China, the larger carnivorous quadrupeds are, of course, not common; but the Bengal tiger still exists in the forests of the southwest, and its gall and bones are said to be used by military officers as a medicine for inspiring courage. Panthers and bears-the paws of the latter affording a luxury for the table-are occasionally found, and deer are common to the north of the Great Wall. The wild ass haunts the cold and dreary wastes towards the Russian frontier, and presents the same solitary and untameable spirit as amidst the burning marshes of western India. Monkeys and wild cats are found in the south, and the latter are considered game, and fattened as a more than ordinary delicacy for the table.

The domestic animals are -the dromedary in Tartary; the deer, used for the purpose of ornament; a horse, little larger than a Shetland pony; a very small ox, and a buffalo equally diminutive, both yoked to the plough; the ass and the mule; the goat and the heavy-tailed sheep, little cared for except in Tartary; and the dog, who sometimes watches the house, and sometimes furnishes a favourite stew. The Chinese never use milk, butter, or cheese; and having few pastures to spare for breeding cattle, they turn them out on waste lands to pick up a subsistence for themselves, which sufficiently