besides communicating with him, report to their respective bureaus in Pekin. Each province works as a perfect part, which cannot be affected by any temporary derangement of an adjoining one, or even the change of a dynasty. In some cases, especially since the Taeping Rebellion, two adjoining provinces, such as Quang-tung and Quang-si, or Hunan and Hupeh, have been raised into viceroyalties, and a viceroy placed over the two governors, but no attempt is made to fuse the administrative arrangements into one government. In every province there is an admirable territorial subdivision into districts, departments, and circuits. A Chinese district is about the size of one of our counties; each of the eighteen provinces contains on an average about eighty such counties; and to every county a certain number of bachelor's degrees are granted every three years, after due examination. All the bachelors of each province, who have carried off this honour, are again examined triennially in the provincial capital by two examiners, sent from the Educational Board in Pekin. On an average, seventy pass in each province for the degree of licentiate; and sometimes as many as 10,000 bachelors compete at these triennial examinations. The licentiates may proceed to Pekin, and there undergo a final examination for the degree of doctor, to which about one-sixth of the candidates are said to attain. The doctor may be certain of an official appointment at an early date; the licenciate may expect a post at the end of a few years; but the bachelor has no right to look forward to either office or emolument. His title is purely honorary. Thus, out of the 360 millions of Chinese over whom the Emperor rules, his Board of Public Education is supposed to winnow out every three years about 1200 licentiates, and from these to select 200 doctors wherewith to fill up the vacancies in all the judicial and civil offices. The whole corps of officials are brought up in one great school, examined by one fixed standard of attainment, moulded from youth upwards to believe and know what their forefathers did, and no more. This it is which produces the homogeneity of the Chinese official mind, and creates a machine which we feel far more inclined to pity, as a sad perversion of the terms 'intellect' and 'education,' than to desire to see imitated in other countries.

In the long history of the Chinese people, it seems but a day since they came in direct contact with western civilisation. Whilst the Egyptian, Assyrian, Jewish, Greek, and Roman Empires flourished and passed away, China was only heard of by an oft-interrupted overland traffic through Tartary or Hindostan. The Mahomedans, half merchants,

half warriors, reached the southern frontier in their frail vessels, and gave, in their records, the first certain account, in A.D. 850, of the civilisation and wealth of this singular people. That glimpse of the Flowery Land was a fleeting one, for we soon read of the awful massacre of all foreigners (120,000 in number) engaged in traffic at Canton, or Canfu; and again China for nigh 400 years was only known to those nations living east of the Indian Sea. It was Marco Polo who, in the middle of the 13th century, re-discovered this remote and in the then state of navigation almost inaccessible country. His report awoke the curiosity and the cupidity of Western Europe. Columbus and Bernal Diaz strove to lead Spain and Portugal to the possession (for in those days to discover was to acquire) of this wonderful Cathay and yet more wonderful Cipanga. It was well for China and Japan that the wealth of the Americas and the Indies served to stay the appetite of the Catholic robbers under Cortez, Pizarro, and Albuquerque, and that the struggle for the participation in her riches should have been deferred until the present day.

The Spaniards and Portuguese were, however, the cause of the suspicious hostility of the Chinese to foreigners of all nations. The Portuguese, between 1520 and 1570, succeeded by piracy and profligate conduct in totally changing the feelings of the seaboard Chinese from cordial hospitality to deepseated hatred and mistrust. The Spaniards, after the establishment of Manilla, treated the Chinese merchants and settlers with such brutal harshness that the government of Canton in retaliation adopted an analogous system in their dealings with the western foreigners who visited their ports. The Dutch and English, following on the wake of the Spaniards and Portuguese, suffered for these foregone misdeeds, and, as circumstances suited, either resented it with harshness or pocketed the ill-treatment for the sake of the pelf. Yet in a country so vast as China it is more than likely that the contempt and mistrust of the foreigner which pervades the population would hardly have become generally disseminated but for the conduct of the Roman Catholic missionaries between the years 1600 and 1720. They were at first received kindly. Mateo Ricci and his Jesuit brethren were most successful, not only in making converts to Christianity, but in impressing the Emperor and the officials of China with the superiority of their attainments. The Jesuits forbore to enter at once into direct hostility with the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. They admitted as a civil rite the reverence paid to the tombs of

ancestors, and to the representation of the Emperor, acts which are typical of filial duty and obedience, and are the foundation of all Chinese authority. The successors of the first missionaries denounced their brethren for thus yielding to expediency, and fulminated a Popish bull against such heretical proceedings. The Emperor, knowing no God, and ruling over millions of theoretical atheists, claimed to be the only person from whom all human happiness flowed, and full of wrath at the invasion of his supposed rights, he swept out the religion of Christ from the widespread provinces of China. Thus the first attempt made by the Chinese to depart from the wisdom of their ancestors, who had laid down as an axiom that nothing but evil could arise from communication with foreigners, resulted in misery and bloodshed, and the barriers between China and the barbarous nations were made more impassable than ever. In our day there has been another awakening of the Chinese intellect to the teachings imported from the West, and again it has brought terrible affliction upon a peaceloving people. This trouble has been the Taeping rebellion, which had its origin in the first effect of Protestant teaching upon the minds of the literati of the province of Quangtung. Of this terrible scourge, which has swept devastation over the fairest portions of the empire, and wrought the ruin of millions, Mr. Meadows treats at some length, and his remarks are well worthy of perusal; though we do not think he has condemned in sufficiently strong terms a horde of banditti, who, under the mask of religion, are guilty of every atrocity.

Unhappily for the people, who only desired to live as their forefathers had done, the valuable products of China became articles of common necessity in every British and American household; the restricted mercantile operations of the East India Company were not sufficient to supply the wants of the home markets; monopoly gave way to free-trade, and Downing Street instead of Leadenhall held itself responsible after 1833 for the state of our relations with the Chinese empire. Wise men shook their heads, and foretold that 'war with China, with wide-spread individual ruin, would ensue sooner or later.' Any one who knew the manner in which trade with China had been carried on might safely infer that when Government stepped in, as the representative of our national dignity, conceited mandarins and haughty Englishmen would soon come to blows. Without officially informing the Chinese rulers of the purposed change in our policy, we abruptly appointed officers with instructions to carry out the new judicial and fiscal arrangements. From 1833

to 1839 there was almost an incessant squabble between mandarins and English officials, and at last, in the fall of the latter year, the Chinese assumed the aggressive under the pretext of suppressing the opium trade. A war followed which extended nearly over two years, and the court of Pekin awoke to the magnitude of its foreign relations when called upon to pay seven millions sterling for having insulted the majesty of Britain. It saw when too late how, under the mask of trade, western nations had in point of fact inveigled it into political intercourse. A powerful fleet at Nankin, and the Grand Canal in our hands, the Emperor and his councillors were fain to submit; but the hatred they must have entertained towards those who had inflicted the humiliation can only be understood by persons acquainted with the Asiatic character. They conceded a treaty, it is true, but never lost an opportunity of evading its clauses. This line of conduct opened a fine field for the energy of English officials of all classes, and it became their constant duty to try and enforce every stipulation, however distasteful. Whenever success crowned their efforts, our Government rewarded them, without always inquiring into the morality of the means by which the end was attained. Whilst this constant bickering was going on between the British and Chinese authorities, rendering another rupture imminent, the trade with China was assuming gigantic proportions, and made our administration at home exceedingly desirous of avoiding a collision which would endanger so profitable a source of revenue.

It is at this epoch that the Narrative of Lord Elgin's Mission,' by Mr. Laurence Oliphant, opens. By the aid of his agreeable volumes we are enabled to understand the garbled and disjointed Blue-books which have, from time to time, appeared since 1857, and to judge of the difficulties which beset one of the most important missions Great Britain ever sent forth to the East. After a concise and able review of the squabble between Mr. Commissioner Yeh and Sir John Bowring upon the lorcha question, and dwelling upon the indecisive measures taken by our Governor and Admiral, Mr. Oliphant says:—

'Yeh's power to resist even this trifling demand was now proved beyond a doubt. Our inability to enforce it had been no less unmistakeably manifested: nevertheless another letter to Yeh was despatched on the 27th (November, 1856), by the Admiral, who thus alludes to it: "I concurred in opinion with Sir John Bowring, that this was a fitting opportunity for requiring the fulfilment of long evaded treaty obligations, and I therefore, in addition to the original

England in the projected expedition to the north, and, either at Shanghai or at a point nearer the capital, press their common demands jointly on the Cabinet of Pekin."

In the middle of February, 1858, the notes of the Representatives of the four Powers, England, France, America, and Russia, to the Court of Pekin, were despatched to Shanghai, and from thence they were to be forwarded to the capital. Mr. Oliphant, in whose charge Lord Elgin had placed his letter, succeeded in visiting Soo-chow, the provincial capital of the province in which Shanghai is situated, and, thanks to the kind offices of Messrs. Meadows and Lay as interpreters, he saw and heard much in that Capua of China, which he narrates with his usual felicity of expression. He bears ample testimony to the civilization and agricultural industry of the dwellers upon the great central region of the Flowery Land. He was struck, as all Europeans have been, with the ceaseless commercial activity which covers every canal, river, and lake of China with countless sails; and he notices the absence of police and military to enforce law and order among the numberless labourers and travellers who thronged the villages, dotted the fields, and crowded the watery highways of that eastern Holland. He awards the palm of Chinese beauty to the ladies of Soo-chow, agreeing in this particular with the natives, who declare, that to be happy on earth one must be born in Soo-chow, live in Canton, and die in Lianchan-Soo-chow being famed for the personal beauty of its women, Canton for its luxury, or rather debauchery, and Lianchan for producing the best wood for coffins! The description of the interview with Chaou, the Governor of the Province of Kiangsi, is so characteristic that we must transcribe it premising that this same Governor is a potentate who, with despotic powers delegated from the Emperor, rules over thirty-eight millions of Chinese, and the richest portion of the empire.

'This Governor himself took a seat to our right, which, in this land of ceremonies, was considered an additional compliment, inasmuch as the further you are to the left of your host the more highly honoured is your position. Then follows an elaborate interchange of compliments, when the visitor resigns himself entirely to the good offices of the interpreter, who in all probability throws them into somewhat the following shape:

English gentleman, who has never seen his Chinese host before, expresses his pleasure at meeting him.

Interpreter." His Excellency has long looked forward to this day."

'Chinese Dignitary.-"I meet him now as

Int. "The Great Emperor of your honourable nation, is he well?"

Chin. Dig.-" He is well. The Great Sovereign of your honourable nation, is she well?" pests (rebels) still infest the country?"

Int." She is well. Do the troublesome

Chin. Dig.-"The insects are being speedily exterminated."

'Such, I have little doubt, was the tone of conversation which Mr. Meadows and Chaou kept up for a few minutes, until we went on to inform his Excellency that we were the bearers of notes for the Prime Minister Yu, from the four Powers, which were of the atmost importance, and which, we trusted, he would lose no time in forwarding, as delay in their transmission might seriously compromise the interests of the Empire. The covering despatch to himself he opened and read, a crowd of attendants collecting round him and making themselves acquainted with its contents over his shoulder. As we desired that the whole proceeding should be invested with as much publicity as possible, unusual in western diplomacy, was quite in acthis mode of conducting business, though rather cordance with our wishes.

'We were now conducted to a recess, and invited to partake of an extensive display of fruits, pastry, and preserves, first, however, being invited to uncover our heads by our host, who On which says "Will you elevate the cap?" he is answered," We are behaving in a scandalously outrageous manner, forgive our crime;" by which we mean elegantly to apologise for the liberty we are taking in sitting down bareheaded. Then we engage in general conversation, in the course of which Chaou makes sundry inquiries as to the condition of Canton, wishes to know whether we are going to kill Yeh, and when the Ambassadors are coming north. He also, in true Chinese style, indulges in a little quiet irony at the expense of us all, though ostensibly directed at our worthy consul, Mr. Robertson, who, he says, must be glad of having such a good opportunity of seeing the celebrated city of Soochow; but Mr. Robertson protests that Chaou himself is the only sight worth looking at. Certainly a man who is governor of a province containing thirty-eight millions of inhabitants, with a power of life and death, is not an everyday individual, and yet he is only the subordinate of the Governor-General of the Two Kiangs, who, in his turn, is a responsible officer. Chaou was the best specimen of a Chinese gentleman I had yet seen in China: nothing could be more