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magnanimous for us to say that we would rather live in a tea-less world than consent that China should remain an unchristianized country? Put all the gains of commerce with all the chests of bohea and hyson we import into one scale; place a few millions of Bibles, with all the advantages which would result from the free propagation of religion, in the other-and who will say that the latter would not tilt the beam? But it is not needful, any more than it is satisfactory, to push the question to such an extreme as this. Why assume that traffic and Christianity are incompatible pursuits? The Chinese are undoubtedly a jealous and exclusive race. They are suspicious of every gift the barbarians may bring. So far as the Imperialists are concerned, the partial adoption of the Western Faith by the Insurgents must have undoubtedly exhibited it in a somewhat hostile light. But, in truth, the Bible is not a book of revolt. Christianity is certainly not an insurrectionary creed. The Chinese may be ignorant of the fact, but if we have been at such pains to teach them much that they did not understand, why not take some little trouble to enlighten them on a point of such surpassing importance to 360 millions of men? Let it not be said that difficulties have deterred such powerful nations as England and America from attempting the conversion of this populous land. What has Christianity encountered from the day she left her cradle but obstacles and impediments? If she had stood shivering on the margin of every stream it was necessary to cross-if she had recoiled despondingly from every barrier of prejudice it was essential to overleap-if she had flung herself despairingly at the foot of every mountain it was requisite to climb-her voice would still have been unheard in our own country, and her bright presence would not yet have brought the sunshine of soul to the Isles of the West.

But, passing from the consideration of the insurrection to the other leading topic presented by Mr. Meadows' book, what light does he throw upon the subject of Chinese civilization? Never was there a country in which the question assumed a more piquant and perplexing aspect. The anomalies that meet the eye in every direction in the Flowery Land are such as no European laws of progress can reconcile or explain. The celestials were acquainted with the grandest of human arts-printing-some five centuries before it was known in the West; yet whilst we throw off thousands of broad sheets every hour with our steamworked presses, their disseminators of knowledge do all by hand, still using wooden blocks upon which they spread the ink with one brush, and afterwards the paper to be impressed with another. Of all nations on the face of the earth, theirs may be said to be the most literary by its very constitution; yet the books of Con

fucius, produced upwards of two thousand years ago, and the writings of his disciples and commentators, form the staple material of every Chinese library, and almost the sole subjects of Chinese study. They have possessed the art of paper-making for seventeen or eighteen centuries; and yet so little improvement has been effected in the process, that Englishmen, who did not begin their operations until about six centuries ago, scornfully appropriate the thin filmy fabric which comes from Cathay to mere blotting purposes. The celestials are also supposed to have employed the loadstone in steering vessels in the time of the Tsin dynasty, hundreds of years before it was similarly applied in the West; and not only so, but they used it in guiding cars over the land at the same early epoch; yet their junks seem to be incorrigible in their clumsiness, and their naval notions are so puerile, that eyes are painted on the bows of a vessel, as if to enable it to see its way through the waters. Acquainted as they were with the composition of gunpowder long before the Cordelier Schwartz took it into his head to kindle the red beams of war,' they have fabricated the terrible 'fire-drug' with a view to provide rockets and Catherine-wheels for holiday occasions, rather than to fight battles and work artillery. In erecting the Great Wall, which stretches like a huge serpent over hill and valley for a distance of 1500 miles, they reared the most stupendous mass of masonry in the world; yet China is a country where there is scarcely a substantial edifice to be found, for the public buildings are partially of wood, and the temples are feeble, flimsy architectural efforts. In painting they can depict 'insects, birds, fruits ' and flowers very beautifully,' rendering every line and fibre of the original with the minutest accuracy; yet they are so faithless to nature that they refuse to admit shadows into their pictures; and their notions of perspective may be estimated from the common pattern on our plates, where the men passing over the bridge are as tall as the bridge itself, and where the trees are loaded with such prodigious clusters of fruit that it is a standing marvel how they can sustain the ponderous globes they have produced. Long before Jenner appeared in England, the Chinese are supposed to have practised inoculation for the small-pox; yet until the British afforded them a little instruction, the operation was so miserably performed that the virus was inserted into the nostrils, and the patient suffered so much that he frequently lost his sight in consequence. Ages before the Christian era the celestials were versed in the manufacture of silk; and when Heliogabalus first mounted a garment of this sumptuous material, and the sovereigns of France and England at a much later period first drew on their silken stockings, under the idea

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that they were luxuries fit for royal ancles alone, the very peasantry of the middle provinces of China were clothed in the same delicate fabric from head to foot; yet to the present time their artificers produce their silks by hand, and follow the identical processes their forefathers employed when the world was still in its youth. Land of cotton as China is, and full of many-peopled cities, it has no Manchesters or Stockports, with their vast factories and warehouses; and though the mulberry and silkworm thrive in its plantations, and are cultivated with extreme solicitude, the empire can boast of no Spitalfields or Lyons. It is a country where every available acre is brought under the plough, yet the implement with which they turn up the soil is little better than an antediluvian share, drawn in some places by men, in others by women, and in others again by oxen and asses intermixed. Carrying on a busy traffic amongst themselves, the goods the people require, and which cannot be transported along their streams and canals, are conveyed by human beasts of burden instead of being forwarded by wheeled vehicles, or borne on the backs of quadrupeds.

Here, too, is an empire distinguished for its unity and certainly displaying a homogeneity perfectly unrivalled; yet in some of the southern provinces there exists a race of mountaineers, the Meaou-tse, who are perfectly distinct from and independent of the rest of the inhabitants; who have their own laws and appoint their own rulers; who wear long hair in spite of the Manchoo orders to shave the head; who speak a peculiar tongue, and mount a peculiar garb; who have frequently repelled the choicest of the Imperial troops when attempting to climb to their rocky nests; and who sometimes dash down from their hills to plunder the feebler dwellers on the plains. There they have lived from time immemorial, often enemies, always aliens; and such is the consciousness of estrangement between them and the Celestials, that the latter, in constructing their maps, will leave the region of the Meaou-tse a perfect blank, as if it were a pure geographical nullity.

In morals, again, the inconsistencies we encounter at every step are equally startling. There is no country where the principle of filial reverence is so strongly enforced, and none where it is so prominently introduced into the very texture of the State. It is death for a child to use insulting language to a father, or a grandson to a grand-parent; yet the principle of paternal affection hangs so loosely upon the inhabitants that female infanticide is practised without compunction, and numbers of exposed or murdered babes are picked up in the streets of the large towns every year. There is no empire in which the moral

NO. LI.

F

element of Government has been more largely asserted; yet the Celestials are notorious for falsehood and fraud, and in many respects the country seems to possess no conscience at all. An ordinary Chinese,' it has been said, 'lies often, very often: a 'mandarin, always. Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, that liar of the first magnitude-who by-the-bye earned his mendacious reputation by his visit to China-was scarcely to be compared with them. Even Mr. Meadows, with all his natural reluctance to speak harshly of his pet people, admits that little trust is to be reposed in their asseverations, and made it a rule never to place any reliance on what a Chinaman said, though on the most ordinary topics, unless there were something to guarantee his veracity. A native will fib so smoothly and so unhesitatingly, and will assume such an air of outraged innocence when his truthfulness is suspected, that you must allow black to be closely allied to white if you would not grieve his sensibilities to a painful degree. Almost every individual in the empire would have been fit to live at Rome, for which of them could honestly utter the mentire nescio? Nor is mendacity a private vice: it is practised by the most exalted personages in the land, and in matters of the greatest public moment. The Imperial bulletins are guilty of frightful figments, though to be sure this is not an Asiatic failing alone. On such a day the Emperor's army attacked the insurgent troops: the combat was terrible, and lasted for several hours: for a while the loyal warriors were baffled by superior numbers, but they performed such amazing feats of valour that in the end the rebels gave way. Many thousands more indeed than there were in the field-were slaughtered. The rest fled in confusion. The rout was complete. The leader of the rebels had been captured and immediately executed. The insurrection was finally crushed.-All this is the official way of saying that the Imperialists had been drawn into an ambuscade by a pretended retreat on the part of the rebels; that there they had received a profound drubbing, and that the revolted chiefs were advancing in excellent health and spirits to the next town, which they would be certain to take either by storm or treaty.

Just so if we looked at one pleasing usage amongst this people we should expect them to be distinguished by superlative honesty. On or before the last day of the year all debts must be discharged. There is a law to this effect, but it is not simply an inferential principle like our own Statute of Limitation which merely entitles a man to sue within a certain period, without imposing any positive obligation on the debtor to pay, or involving him in any particular obloquy if his virtue should not be equal to the task. In China, the creditor may refresh the memory

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of any negligent person in his books by getting an official dose of bamboo administered; and if he chooses, and can do so without any public disturbance, he may proceed to the house of the refractory individual, and quarter himself there with his family until they have eaten the value of the debt, or reduced the enemy to rectitude. But the legal weight of such a rule is less significant than its moral application. If a man competent to pay should omit to do so at the expiration of the year, he is held to be disgraced. His neighbours despise him, his friends avoid him. He is liable to be mobbed. His dwelling may be attacked; his goods may be destroyed; and, though these extreme proceedings are not officially sanctioned, yet, for purposes of redress, the debtor is regarded as a kind of outlaw to whom justice need lend no attentive ear. Wilful debt is thus treated as a wrong done to the community at large, and the moral sense of the people steps in to aid the laws by making it not less scandalous than illegal to leave accounts unpaid. Yet these same natives, with their delicate sense of pecuniary obligation, and their apparent enthusiasm for honesty, would charge their dearest friend double the value of any article he might wish to buy, and cheat their best brother if a favourable opportunity occurred. Perhaps we should do the same in England-there is no telling; but would it not look rather inconsistent if a British tradesman, after playing all manner of pranks with a customer's bill, were to profess such horror at his want of integrity in delaying a settlement that he-the creditor-could only express it by breaking the debtor's windows on the last day of December, or by hissing him in the streets on the first of January?

Since then such countless anomalies exist in Chinese civilization-for the catalogue and peculiarities might be indefinitely extended-to what cause shall be ascribed the unity and unparalleled duration of this colossal empire? Mr. Meadows thinks that the key to the phenomenon is to be found in three doctrines, together with an Institution, by means of which the 'efficient performance of the work prescribed by two of these 'doctrines is attained, and by which a living practical belief in 'all three is maintained in the mind of the nation. The doctrines are:-I. That the nation must be governed by moral agency in ' preference to physical force. II. That the services of the wisest 'and ablest men in the nation are indispensable to its good 'government. III. That the people have the right to depose a sovereign who, either from active wickedness or vicious in'dolence, gives cause to oppressive and tyrannical rule. The 'institution is-the system of public service competitive exami'nations.' This is the cause of the continued duration of the