of their demonstrations the most hot--it would be a scandal to introduce blooded races of the South. Pagan antiquity had its public triumphs and mythological solemnities; the Middle Ages had their religious pomps and popular festivals. England has nothing left but its horse-racing; France is reduced to revolutionary Kermesses." Certainly the worst lot is that of Mr. Wey's native land. His last comparison is not inapt. A Flemish wake or fair is to the full as dignified and elevating a spectacle as many of the political ceremonies witnessed within the last few years in the streets of Paris. We need but refer back to 1848, with its countless, meaningless trees of liberty, its ranting ignorant clubs, the obscene buffoonery of its press, its republican orgies, and its patriotic song, extracted from an extravagant drama by Dumas-fit hymn for the occasion. We should regret to exchange our hippomania for such costly and perilous excitements, aud would rather impress upon Mr. Wey's countrymen the propriety of cultivating some harmless enthusiasm as a safety-valve for the national steam, and a preservative from burst boilers and broken heads. Notwith standing the meritorious efforts of the Jokai-Clubbe and the very tolerable attendance at the various races round Paris, the Turf evidently takes little hold of the French. They go to a race as to a review, an imperial marriage, a birthday illumination, or any other sight that pleases the eye, passes the time, and is a pretext for a holiday, but they do not in the least enter into it in the English sporting style. The Chase is equally unsuccessful in fascinating Frenchmen, and is hardly likely to be revived in France even by the brilliant displays in Fontainebleau's glades, where the third Napoleon, in cocked hat à la Louis XV., displays his dexterous horsemanship and winds the sylvan horn. Bull-fighting, now that the French have a Spanish empress, would, it was at one time thought, be introduced-thrown as a tub to the turbulent whale, to prevent his attacking the ship of the State; but although one looks leniently upon the practice in the case of those European Arabs, the Spaniards-an untender race in matters of blood-letting such barbarous diversions into polished Paris, the civilised centre of Europe, and to have gored horses and crushed picadors displaying their entrails and agonies in a modern imperial arena, under the bright eyes of Lutetia's tender daughters. If, however, the introduction of bull-fights could be taken as an insurance against the erection of barricades, the balance would be so largely on the side of humanity that it would be inexcusable to neglect sending immediately for the Chiclanero and a few other renowned toreros, for a drove of the fiercest Murcians that ever lifted luckless Rosinante on point of horn, for a due garnishing of chulos, banderillas, slashed jackets, antique spurs, silk stockings, and straight swords, and for all the rest of the paraphernalia indispensable in the bull-ring, and which have been minutely and pictorially displayed by Richard Ford, Lake Price, and other distinguished aficionados. But we fear it would all be of no use. The French despise foreign innovations, and cling to the sort of excitement they have long been accustomed to, derived from the unwholesome practice of subverting governments and fighting in the streets. For our part, we much prefer a day at Ascot to a day behind the barricades; and so, we suspect, does Mr. Wey, who admits that he was astonished by the first race, interested by the second, subjugated by the third; and that he and his two companions, carried away by the torrent of enthusiasm, found themselves shouting and yelling with the rest, joyous without any assignable cause, and radiant with exultation at Lord Eglinton's victory. The absurdity of their excitement and vociferations suddenly striking them, they looked at each other, burst out laughing, and set off upon their pleasant walk back to Windsor. We have nearly done with Mr. Wey, who ends his book as amusingly as he began it, with anecdotes illustrative of English prudery, which he maintains to exist in words rather than in deeds. Some of these anecdotes are not very credible, others may be true; all are evidently embroidered in the style habitual to this vivacious Frenchman, who declares that he cannot better mark the moral distance be- the circumstances of the case, when tween France and England than by they forthwith joined in the infectious saying that an English writer would hilarity. Up came the police, those scruple to relate them, for fear of being guardian angels of bewildered foreignshocking, but that French ladies would ers in London's labyrinth. The agnever have supplied their subject. grieved Gaul felt sure of sympathy, The only parts of the stories in ques- succour, and revenge. He was never tion that can reasonably be considered more mistaken. The gentlemen in shocking (a word that Mr. Wey evi- blue roared like the rest. They evidently takes to be the root of the dently could not help it. CompuneEnglish language) are the mischievous tion mingled with their mirth, but touches for which we are manifestly they nevertheless guffawed exceedindebted to the narrator's pen, but ingly. To what extremities the which may be readily pardoned in desperate Frenchman might have proconsideration of the sense he displays ceeded, it is impossible to say, had of the humorous-not a common not a gentleman acquainted with his quality in Frenchmen. Instead of language appeared upon the scene. dwelling upon his bathing embarrass- He too laughed violently on beholdments at Brighton, we revert by way ing the card, and when he had spoken of finale, to a laughable story in one a few words to the Frenchman, the of his earlier chapters, which struck Frenchman laughed likewise, which us as doubly ludicrous by reason of was a signal for a recommencement its extreme probability. A French- of the general hilarity. The address man, newly arrived in London, im- so carefully copied by the foreigner at patient to see the town, but fearful of the corner of his street was the folnot finding his way back to his hotel, lowing: "Commit no nuisance." We carefully copied upon a card the name write the words in our minutest crowpainted on the wall at the corner of quill characters, out of consideration the street in which he was situated. for the national prudery upon which This done, he felt himself safe, and Mr. Wey so strongly insists. set out for a ramble, much upon the principle vulgularly known as "following one's nose." The whole day long he strolled and stared to his heart's content: wearied at last, he jumped into a cab, and with the easy confident air of a man who feels perfectly at home, he read from the card he had prudently preserved the name of the street he dwelt in. The cabman grinned horribly. "This English pronunciation is sadly difficult," said the Frenchman to himself; "he does not understand me." And he placed the card before the man's eye. Cabby grinned more than ever, gazed in his fare's astonished face, and ended by sticking his hands in his pockets and roaring with laughter. Indignation on the part of the foreigner; he appealed to the passers-by, who gravely listened to him at first, but, upon beholding his card, joined one and all, in chorus with the coachman. The Frenchman now got furious, swore, stamped, gesticulated, like a candidate for Bedlam. He went so far as to threaten the laughers; a crowd assembled, everybody sympathised with him till they learned 66 The last few days of Mr. Wey's residence in England were devoted to solitary rambles out of town. He desired to compare London with the provinces, expecting contrasts, which he did not find. So after journeying north and west, to Yorkshire and to Wales, and making up his mind that the Englishman is everywhere the same, and that all vestiges of old customs are rapidly wearing out, he turned his face towards France, previously passing a couple of days at Brighton, where, he says, one breathes money and ennui," and visiting Hastings, where he met an old acquaintance, then within a few days of his death. "There came along the shore a little carriage drawn by hand, such as is used for children and invalids. It contained an aged man, deplorably emaciated, dressed in a blue greatcoat, buttoned across the breast, and in a black cravat, whose tie surmounted a little faded shirtfrill, and wearing a grey hat, from beneath which a few very white hairs straggled down his temples. The countenance was long and drawn, pallid and composed; but the austere I never should have recognised that spectre of royalty, in the livery of death. ... A few days previously, I had dined in an obscure haunt, side by side with the ephemeral powers who sent the dynasty of July into exile, and so soon followed it thither. A fortnight later, the London newspapers informed France of the death of that king who had cherished the chimera of perpetuating a dynasty, and who, violating in his own family the hereditary principle, had proclaimed, upon the very steps of the throne, the downfall of his race." We shall not allow Mr. Wey to tempt us into politics, a topic on which he barely touches. He returned to London, found most of his friends departed, and was suddenly attacked by a feeling of solitude amongst millions, and by a craving for Paris. Home-sickness assailed him, and he pined after the boulevards. He was overjoyed at sight of the little blue soldiers on Calais pier, and the sweetest notes he had heard during his memorable visit to the opera (where he discovered, by the by, that the Haymarket opera-house has an echo) were harsh to his ears as the music of her Majesty's guard, compared with the antiquated air of "Gentille Annette," whom the Calais church-bells tenderly reproached with neglecting to repair "sous la coud. rette." Next day, strolling about Paris, he fancied himself in a quiet provincial town. Compared with St. Paul's, the Pantheon looked to him like "a disagreeable bonbonnière," and the Seine dwindled into a rivulet. But such comparisons have nothing humiliating to the Frenchman, who far prefers his yellow streamlet to our turbid estuary, and who, whatever justice he may render to the wonders and attractions of London, reserves his highest praise and tenderest affection for the beauties and pleasures of Paris. THE PAST AND FUTURE OF CHINA. mer idols to the sea, and scattered gleams of Christianity are breaking like an unexpected dawn through the long night of Paganism. We cannot say that the interest which this revolution has excited in this country has fallen short of its due amount for we never recollect a subject on which people's minds have been more curious and agog. Unfortunately their anxiety to know has been very much greater than the actual amount of knowledge which has been placed within their reach. the making of books on China, indeed -as on other subjects-there has been no end; but how little genuine knowledge is to be extracted from the majority of the works! They are either sketches of individual life and personal adventure at some one of the five sea-ports recently opened to us Of By this time, for ought we know, Peking may be in the hands of the insurgent Chinese the Emperor and his Tartars in full flight for their native wilds of Mantchooriaand a new leaf turned over in the annals of the Celestial Empire. But whether this climax of the struggle have arrived or not, we know that there is at present a national move ment on foot in China which is exciting the interest, and well merits the attention, of the public of Europe. That movement unites the chief features of all the great changes that stand out in the history of the world. It is at once a political revo'ut on, a struggle of races, and a revival of religion. Somnolent China clamours for, and demands by force of arms, a reform of the present abuses of her administrative system; she is carrying on a war of extermination against-books meant to be readable, and the Mantchoo race, who, for two centuries have domineered over and given a dynasty to the Flowery Land, while her rivers are floating down her for nothing more; or if the general character of the people and their history be attempted to be drawn, it is done in such a narrow spirit, and with such a bold defiance of facts, as seriously prise our readers that we shall soon to mislead the unwary, and wholly dissatisfy the reflecting. The points affected by the present revolution are precisely those of which the European public has least correct notions. And so little is really known of the political state and religious beliefs of the Chinese, that the bestinformed of our journals hardly ever diverge from the routine of retailing news without stumbling into misstatements or erroneous theories, which show how imperfectly our many book-writers on China have as yet done their work. One of the most common of these errors of the day is, that the rebellion is something unique and unparalleled in the history of China. A rebellion in China! Such an event seems to our press and public the most extraordinary thing in the world. And they stand in natural amazement at the supposed spectacle of the "immobile" empire of China now, for the first time for four thousand years, starting from its fancied quiescence, and inaugurating all at once so stupendous a change. It takes a little of the couleur de rose off the affair, however, to learn, what is the fact, that a score of such dynastic revolutions have already taken place in China, and that some of these present features in essence the same as those displayed in the rebellion which now seems to us so extraordinary. The Chinese Empire, in fact, existing throughout four thousand years, has purged and repurged itself again and again; dynasty after dynasty has grown effete and fallen; and both in its religion and in its general history, the empire presents a more remarkable (because more long-continued) series of changes than is anywhere else to be met with in the world. Let us glance, then, at the grand leading features of this empire and its people. Let us look at it in its history, its politics, its religion, and its remarkable system of national education-doing this not superficially, but searching out the true spirit of each. And then, casting the eye forward, let us endeavour to discern the issue of the present struggle, and its bearings upon the rest of the world. We shall, as in duty bound, "begin at the beginning;" but we may ap be into the thick of events, as we have no intention of wasting time upon those fabulous tales and cosmog. onies which some European writers so carefully commence with, but which are utterly repudiated by the majority of the Chinese themselves. The limits of China Proper are nearly as marked as those of India, and the country seems to have been destined by nature for the development of an isolated and continuous civilisation. Bounded on the south and east by a tempestuous sea, on the north by vast and herbless deserts, on the west by lofty mountain-chains, this empire forms a nearly circular area of from five to six hundred leagues in diameter, shut in from the rest of the world. Rising in terraces as it recedes from the sea, watered from west to east by two great navigable rivers, traversed longitudinally by their tributaries, dotted with lakes, and intersected by numerous mountain-ranges, this immense region embraces the climates and productions of nearly all latitudes, as well as the inestimable riches of the mineral kingdom. Hence this old empire of China, as large as all Europe exclusive of Turkey, has always sufficed for itself, and developed its power in itself and by itself. It is true that since the European nations became great consumers of tea, they have imported into it in return foreign products unknown to the ancient inhabitants, and which have become "necessary luxuries" to the present population; yet, notwithstanding, the interchange of products between its different provinces (some of them as large as kingdoms of Europe) might suffice for the industrial and commercial wants of the people, and hence, among other reasons, the great indifference shown by the Chinese Government of the country for foreign commerce. The Mongolian tribe, who in remote ages wandered into this country, differ now from the rest of their race in having countenances less flattened and more expressive, and in general are as superior in physical as in intellectual qualities to the population of the adjoining regions;-a proof, on the largest scale, of the elevating influences of civilisation upon both the body and mind of man. They have black, strong, lank hair,-that of the females being often very beautiful; a flat nose, small oblique eyes and thin eyelids, round and prominent cheeks, a pointed chin, and little beard. Their constitution is of a coarse grain; consequently they are much less sensitive than Europeans, and also less subject to diseases. At what period they first broke off from the great central mass of mankind, it is impossible to say with accuracy; but, entering their future empire from the north-west, their earliest seat was the provinces now called Shensy (anciently Tsin) and Honan, which constituted the realm of their first king, Fobi. At this early period they seem to have been a pastoral people, living on the produce of their flocks and herds; but Fohi's successor taught them the art of agriculture, and induced them to cultivate and settle upon the land. Spreading southwards, they next occupied all the country to the north of the Yang-tse-keang, but suffered dreadfully, and for many years, from a great inundation; and thence gradually penetrated to the full limits of the present empire, the southern provinces not being wholly subdued and civilised until subsequent to the Christian era. Everywhere-Egypt perhaps excepted -we find that vast forests have preceded the reign of civilised man on earth. Every one has heard of the ancient forests of Europe and of the New World; the old Hindoo poems are full of descriptions of the primeval woods which overspread the Indian Peninsula; and in the early history of China, also, we find that the newcomers from the north-west were forced to level before them vast forests, in order to reclaim the soil from the dominion of nature. Still more remarkable, we find that before the Chinese (as in India before the Hindoos) there existed an aboriginal race, which the "sons of Han"* had to drive before them in their progress southwards. These the new-comers styled "Sons of the Wilderness" and "Bearers of great bows;" and under the first of these titles (in Chinese, Meaotse) they still exist, in an almost savage state, in the high and inaccessi ble mountains of Western China; having thus lived for four thousand years in contact with Chinese civilisation, yet refusing all amalgamation; and illustrating the extraordinary historical fact, that there are certain tribes of men against whom the waves of civilisation break for ever in vain, and whose destiny it seems to be only to tenant the earth till a superior race arrive to dispossess them. Nothing is more perplexing to the historian, or more monstrous to the eye of modern science, than the chronology of the Hindoos, with its kalpas, its divine ages, its reigns of Menou, and its nights of Brahma, and, finally, its astounding assertion that this present world has existed for five and a half millions of years, and has yet to exist for upwards of four billions more. In Chinese history this difficulty is little felt. Some otherwise very sensible native historians, indeed, think they can trace back the course of events for six thousand years before our era: but the "Men of Letters," comprising the great bulk of the educated classes of the nation, either reject these traditions or refuse to pronounce upon them. Like their great master, Confucius, they abstain from all speculative qestions, and content themselves with rigorously establishing the authentic history of their nation, which, they are agreed, goes back with perfect certainty to the sixty-first year of the reign of Hoang-te, 2637 years before the birth of Christ. We have not space to detail the chronological elements which serve as a base for Chinese history; but all writers concur with M. Pauthier in asserting that "no nation possesses, or ever possessed, a body of history so complete and authentic as the people of China." And this will not appear surprising when it is understood that the intelligent registration of events has in all ages been honoured and favoured in that country, and that since the reign of Hoang-te there has existed in the capital of the empire a Tribunal for the writing of History, whose members, chosen from the most distinguished of the Men of Letters, enjoy several prerogatives, as well as im * The favourite self-appellative of the Chinese. |