British army, the squadron, the division, the troop, the company, the men-all give themselves up to their assigned duty in the absolute certainty of support. It is this universal feeling of identity, this implicit confidence in each other, which gives success to a high and heroical valour that would otherwise have more effect in warming the imagination than in influencing the destinies of mankind. But the hideous atrocities of the British troops are altogether unsusceptible of excuse, unless the blame be transferred from the individuals who perpetrated them to the system of which they were the blind and fatal instruments. The fact that War converts men for the time into demons cannot be more strikingly illustrated than by the habitual massacres of fugitives committed by an army that was never exposed to the smallest chance of defeat, and whose losses compared with that of the enemy were not as one to five hundred. Still these very massacres were merciful in their effect. The survivors of a Chinese force that had once been subjected to them never rallied; one after one the armies of the empire vanished from the field no more to return; and a war which might otherwise have desolated the country for many years, was brought to a close, as intercepted despatches testify, by the absolute want of soldiers to maintain it. The reprisals of the Chinese, it may be added, were limited by their weakness and their fears, except in one memorable instance which occurred after the slaughter of the Tartars at Cha-poo. This was the public execution at Formosa of three hundred British subjects who had been shipwrecked on that island.

On the return of the expedition to Hong-Kong it found already a thriving colony where it had left only a fishing hamlet; and on the 22nd of July, 1843, Sir Henry Pottinger concluded a commercial treaty which

placed the trade, as regards duties and other regulations, on a permanent footing. A subsidiary treaty, however, dated in October, and securing to ALL nations the same privileges which the English had extorted for themselves, must be considered the crowning glory of the work; and it makes us feel, when turning a retrospective glance upon the guilt, meanness, and folly which at one time characterised the intercourse of Europe with China, that we have abundant reason to be satisfied with the present age, and proud of that noble country which is at the head of its greatness and civilization.

Since the date of these treaties there have been no events sufficiently important for an abstract of history like the present. It cannot be supposed that the elements of disorder subsided at once, or that the stream of commerce flowed without interruption into its appointed channels; but upon the whole the new regime has worked well-although certainly without the splendid and immediate results which some anticipated. Time is required for the operation of change in China. The forms of her civilization have been elaborated by many ages, and must be fused or broken before they can be recast in new models. At this moment we are only at the commencement of a revolution, of which Posterity will see the result and reap the benefit,

CHAPTER V.

THE JAPAN ISLANDS.

UPWARDS of two hundred miles east of the peninsula of Corea, and between five and six hundred from the nearest part of China, there lies a country consisting of three thousand eight hundred and fifty islands, islets, and rocks, which, although not at present in connection of any kind with Great Britain, we must not pass altogether without mention. If China is reckoned a mystery by the Europeans, JAPAN is a mystery even to the Chinese. Both these nations are obviously of Tartar origin, and numerous resemblances even in customs and manners attest that they were either originally the same tribe, or that the one has derived the materials of its civilization from the other; and yet no two countries can be more generally dissimilar both in the form of the government and the genius of the people.

In Japan the emperor is not merely the "holy lord" who regards it as no robbery to assert equality with the

Heavens and the Earth: he is too holy to condescend even to govern except in religious things; and the only way in which he maintains the stability and tranquillity of his realm is by sitting immoveable for a certain number of hours every day upon his throne, taking care not to turn his head lest the part of the empire deprived of his glance should wither, or the part subjected to its intensity be ruined. He must never touch the earth with his foot; for what he touches becomes so holy that it is ever after unfit for mere mortals. For this reason his raiment, the food that has been upon his table, the utensils that have cooked it, anything-everything-he has sanctified must be destroyed; and this work of destruction and renovation goes on without ceasing, since nothing can be applied for his use a second time. His visitors are not men but gods or canonized saints, and these are admitted to his presence but for one month in the year, during which period the temples are deserted by the people, since the only mediators through whom they dare approach the Almighty are absent.

But, notwithstanding all this extravagance, the Japanese religion is purity itself compared with the absurd superstitions of the Chinese. They believe in a supreme deity, whom they call the sun-goddess, too holy to be approached in prayer except by the saints and the emperor; and in the immortality of the soul, and the doctrine of future rewards and punishments; and the only emblem used in their devotions is a mirror, the typification of purity. Abstinence from whatever defiles either the soul or the body is with them the law and the prophets; and notwithstanding their observances in this respect in eating and otherwise (as strict and complicated as those of the ancient Jews), they are for ever crying out "Unclean! unclean!" The period of this impurity

does not extend merely "until the even," but must be filled up with fasting and prayer, and during this time the unclean must "touch no hallowed thing nor come into the sanctuary," and his head must be covered from the beams of the holy sun. The death of a near relation is as troublesome in this respect as was the birth of a child to the mothers of Israel; and it is not till the period of uncleanness is over that the mourner, laying aside his white dress, may return into society. Next to the state religion is the universal Buddhism, but blended with Japanese faith; and for the learned and philosophical there is a sort of Confucianism entirely unconnected with mythology.

The first absolute emperor is supposed by Klaproth to have been a Chinese warrior, who commenced his reign in Japan in the year 660 before Christ; and it may be conjectured that the extraordinary system he contrived, pressing as stringently upon the sovereign as upon the people, was intended more for his successors than for himself. These successors, however, were 66 to the manner born," and eschewing the active toils of royalty, sank gradually into mere puppets, many of them throwing off their irksome dignity by a legal abdication in favour of their children. The result, in a country divided among feudal princes, may be easily imagined; and in the confusion of civil war, the most powerful or least scrupulous of these princes, seizing the opportunity of a long minority, assumed the temporal authority as something too mean for so sacred a personage as his superior. This new office became hereditary; and at the present day, the emperor of Japan, acknowledged to be such by his subjects, the successor and representative of the gods, and the nominal proprietor of the whole realm, is little more than a high priest or pontiff.