But we were bound for West Prussia. We had a desire to see the manners

and _manège_ upon an old Prussian barony, where an ancient schloss still

overlooks lake, field, and forest, and a numerous peasantry, though not

bound like serfs to the soil, still pay so many days of bodily toil for

the house and land which they hold of the lord. By the Posen railway,

therefore, we left Stettin, and in four hours reached Woldenburg, whence

four hours more by extra post brought us to the village of Tütz. Here a

welcome awaited us from our friends in the old palace, while a natural

interest, not unmixed with a little wonder, recommended us to the kind

consideration of the villagers. Many of these simple people had never

before seen a real live John Bull, and could not help suspecting a

connection of some sort between the visit of “die zwei Englander” and

the rumours of war which even in this secluded spot were already

agitating their minds.

The lands attached to the old schloss in which we found ourselves, were

in former times very extensive. When there were Dukes of Brandenburg,

the lord of the place, it is said, was wont to go to war with his

neighbours; on one occasion, when taken prisoner, he was obliged to

ransom himself by ceding to the duke a large forest, which is still the

property of the Crown. But the castle has passed through several hands

since, and the whole estate now includes only twenty thousand acres,

worth in fee about £30,000. Of these, about nine thousand are in forest,

chiefly pine, four thousand in lakes and bogs, four thousand in arable

culture, and three thousand rented in farms. These divisions include a

considerable quantity of pasture and meadow land, and on the edge of the

forests the sheep find food in summer. The soil is generally light and

sandy, with a bed of clay marl at a greater or less depth below. The

custom of the Prussian proprietors is to farm their own land, and thus

they have extensive establishments, and carry on various branches of

rural economy. The timber is felled, and either sold on the spot to

merchants who come from a distance to buy, or is split up into billets

and sent to the large towns for firewood; or, where a shipping place is

accessible, is sawn into balks (_balken_) suitable for the English

market. The pines are principally Scotch firs (_Pinus sylvaticus_); and

here and there at the outskirts, or in the open glades of the forest,

are seen magnificent trees of this species throwing out picturesque old

arms, such as at times arrest the eye and step of the traveller in our

Scottish highlands. Such he may see, for instance, on the borders of

Loch Tula—the straggling relics of what were great forests in the days

of our forefathers.

The arable land is chiefly under rye, of which great breadths are

occasionally seen without fences or divisions. Already, where the snow

had melted, the surface of these rye-fields was beautifully green. The

average yield scarcely exceeds twenty bushels an acre, and it is often

very much less. Were the labour and manure expended upon half the land,

the profit, as our own experience has shown, would on the whole be much

increased. Few root crops are grown, and these only on the low, black,

and boggy land. The manures employed are what is made by the cattle and

sheep, marl, black earth (_moder_) from the peaty bottoms, the pine

leaves which are collected in the forests, and are known under the name

of _waldstrew_ (forest straw), and the wood and peaty ashes from their

fires. It is common to grow rape for the seed; and then the proprietor,

if he has the means, erects a crushing-mill, uses the cake for his

cattle, and sells the oil. Of rape-cake it is usual to give about a

quarter of a pound a-day to the horses—their other food being oats,

pease, and rye, mixed in equal quantities, and given three times a-day

with chopped straw _ad libitum_. Of his potatoes the lord makes brandy,

and feeds his stock on the refuse which remains in the still. Thus, he

is a distiller as well as an oil-crusher, and a distillery in most parts

of Germany is a usual appendage to the farm. Only very small, usually

waxy, potatoes are retained for table use, the large and mealy ones

being given either to the pigs or to the brandy-maker. Then the lakes

yield their share of revenue. They are fished in winter, with nets

introduced through holes in the ice; and the take from the lakes in this

quarter is sent to the market of Berlin. Thus the lord is a

fish-merchant also. Some proprietors, again, begrudge the waste of wood

ashes upon the land; and as these readily melt into glass, another way

of adding to the revenue is to build a glass-house. Hence many small

glass-houses are scattered about in the midst of the forests, and

another complication is added to the affairs and the manifold accounts

of the North Prussian landlord. If he possess a bed of good marl, he

burns it into lime with his waste timber, and both sells and uses it. If

he find good clay, he makes bricks and coarse pottery. Thus he attempts

to develop everything, to turn everything into money. He is the sole

capitalist. There is no division of labour. He monopolises all trades

and wholesale commerce. He has large concerns, various establishments,

numerous servants, intricate accounts, and withal, as we Englanders

would expect, it is only one man here and there who makes things yearly

better, and finally enriches himself. Thus the Prussian aristocracy are

livers in the country, full of affairs, rarely reside in Berlin, and at

the most come for a month or two to apartments in a hotel, and attend a

few state balls and receptions given by the royal family, and return

again to their country habits. Amid the limited society of the

unproductive sandy plains these habits not unfrequently degenerate.

Upon this estate two farms were let to tenants. We visited one of them.

It was let on a lease for fifteen years, contained 2000 acres of

corn-land, and 550 of meadow. The rent was 1800 dollars in money, 200 in

kind, and about 500 in taxes—in all, about 2500 dollars, or a dollar

(3s.) an acre. The tenant had upon it 800 sheep, 14 cows, 18

draught-oxen, and 10 horses. Twelve families of labourers were lodged

upon the farm, and extra labour was employed as required. Everything in

the way of stock and implements was defective. The sheep are kept under

cover in the winter. They are fed on hay, the breeding ewes receiving,

besides, chopped turnips and carrots. The sheep-houses, both here and

elsewhere, we found to be warm and comfortable. The lord worked his own

land with 64 horses and 76 draught-oxen, and had a yearly increasing

flock of sheep, amounting at present to 4500.

The farm labourers are but poorly off. Those who live on the farm (the

_hausinnen_) receive for the man’s wage four silver groschen, and for

the woman’s three silver groschen a-day. (Five silver groschen make an

English sixpence.) They have a house, for which each of them, the man

and woman, must pay two days a week in summer, one day and a half in

autumn, and half a day in the three first months of the year. They are

allowed also two acres of corn-land, and a third of an acre for a

garden. They have pasture for a cow, and are permitted to cut the

inferior wood on the heath for fuel, and to gather the pine-needles from

the forest for manure. Day-labourers, not resident on the farm, receive

5 silver groschen a-day—the unhappy sixpence of our Irish peasant.

There are on the outside, and here and there indenting the large estate,

numerous small properties of from five to eighty acres, formerly

belonging to the lord, and many of them owing him still a yearly

acknowledgment. These people, though in a sense independent, yet upon

such land are generally poor. They keep one or two horses, or two cows,

to plough their light sandy soil, from three to thirty sheep, and a few

pigs. With a single horse a man will work his farm of forty or fifty

acres. Milk is their principal diet, and many never eat meat once a

year, unless it be a bit of their own home-fed pork.

In this part of Prussia the people are nearly all Roman Catholics. Most

of the traffic is in the hands of Jews. Each sect has its own place of

worship and its own school in the village. The Roman Catholic priest is

nominated by the lord, and the evangelical minister and the Jewish rabbi

must both be approved by him. There are six schools on the estate, which

are under government inspection, and of which the salaries of the

masters are paid by the estate. Religious instruction is not excluded

from the schools, but each denomination has here at least its own

school. The sectarian spirit is very bitter, especially on the part of

the ignorant Romanists, against the evangelicals, whose church had gone

down, but has lately been rebuilt, very much to the dissatisfaction of

the dominant party. Hence, though Protestant children are sometimes

found in the Romanist school, the contrary is never the case. On

occasion of our visit, a grander display than usual was got up by the

priest in honour of the English visitors of our host. The village

Schüzerei, sixty strong, marched up on the Sunday morning, with music

and banners, to escort us to church. The whole population had turned out

to see the strangers. The church was crowded to suffocation; and to

identify himself with the occasion, the priest got up a religious

procession through and around the church. First went so many of the

sharpshooters, carrying their muskets; next a party bearing the Virgin

and Child under a canopy; then the Herrschaft from the schloss, with

lighted candles in their hands; then the priest with the Host under a

large canopy, borne by four men; and the procession was closed by the

remainder of the armed Schüzer, and by men and women in great numbers

from the congregation. Coming out at the west end of the church, it

marched northwards round the church, through six inches of untrodden

snow; and when the head of the procession again reached the west end,

the priest stopped, and with him the people. He then elevated the Host,

when down went men and women, all in adoration, kneeling in the cold

snow. Our travelling-companion, who had never assisted at a Roman

Catholic service, had accompanied the party to church, not knowing what

awaited him, and he was indeed mortified when he found himself

unintentionally, and from the goodness of his nature, involved in such

an act of worship.

While the party were absent at church, we walked to an adjoining round

hill for the purpose of enjoying the view, when, in a thin plantation

which partially covered it, we stumbled upon the Jewish burying-ground.

Scattered among the trees, here and there stood on end slabs of granite

and other hard rock, split from the boulder-stones of which we have

already spoken; and on the flat faces of these were graven large,

beautifully clear, deeply cut, Hebrew characters, bearing, no doubt, the

names and commemorating the virtues of the dead, and expressing the love

and sorrow of the living. In this far-off region the lonely Hebrew

graves, so far from the homes of the once-favoured people, recalled to

our minds those distant days when the Euphrates saw them weeping

disconsolate, and the oppressor, as now in Poland and its borders,

treating them with contumely and despite.

“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we

remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst

thereof.

“For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song,

and they that wasted us, mirth. Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning.

“If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my

mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”

It is very remarkable to find three millions of Jews settled in this

portion of Europe. It may have been that, in former ages, when the Roman

Church persecuted them so madly, they found greater peace and safety

near the limits of the Eastern and Western churches, where the power of

both was somewhat lessened; but certainly, in modern times, the two

million two hundred thousand who are subjects of the Czar might readily

find a more comfortable home.

Among other things which will amuse the Englishman in Germany, and, if,

like ourselves, he refreshes himself at times with a cup of good tea,

may perchance annoy him occasionally, is the kind of beverage he will

obtain under this name. In the hotels we had often experienced this, and

we expected to have our tea weak enough in the schloss also. But a

refinement we had heard of, but never met, here presented itself in the

form of a tiny bottle of rum, which was handed round with the sugar and

cream to give a flavour to the tea! This contrivance for giving the tea

some taste and flavour, so much less simple, one would suppose, than

adding more of the pure leaf, is common in other parts of Germany

besides West Prussia. Here is a humorous passage from a recent work of

fiction by a German baroness, which illustrates very graphically the

Teutonic notions about tea-drinking.

“At this moment Walburg exclaimed, ‘The water boils!’ and they all

turned towards the hearth. ‘How much tea shall I put into the

tea-pot?’ asked Madame Berger, appealing to Hamilton.

‘The more you put in the better it will be,’ answered Hamilton,

without moving.

‘Shall I put in all that is in this paper?’

Hamilton nodded, and the tea was made.

‘Ought it not to boil a little now?’

‘By no means.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Walburg, ‘a little piece of vanille would improve the

taste.’

‘On no account,’ said Hamilton.

‘The best thing to give it a flavour is rum,’ observed Madame Berger.

‘I forbid the rum, though I must say the idea is not bad,’ said

Hamilton, laughing.

Hildegarde put the tea-pot on a little tray, and left the kitchen just

as her stepmother entered it.

His tea was unanimously praised, but Madame Rosenberg exhibited some

natural consternation on hearing that the whole contents of her paper

cornet, with which she had expected to regale her friends at least

half-a-dozen times, had been inconsiderately emptied at once into the

tea-pot!

‘It was no wonder the tea was good! English tea, indeed! Any one could

make tea after that fashion! But then, to be sure, English people

never thought about what anything cost. For her part, she found the

tea bitter, and recommended a spoonful or two of rum.’ On her

producing a little green bottle, the company assembled around her with

their tea-cups, and she administered to each one two or three

spoonfuls as they desired.”[34]

Here our limits compel us to stop. After staying a few days at Tütz we

returned upon our steps, again saw our friends at Berlin, thence came to

Cologne in one day, to Ghent the second, and to London the third. We

fell in with the Peace deputies on their way from St Petersburg, and

divers other accidents happened to us which our most patient readers

will thank us for passing by.

THE NATIONAL LIFE OF CHINA.

If it becomes one to know something of those with whom he is about to be

brought into contact, it is high time the rest of the world were

acquainting itself with that portion of the vast human family that has

so long segregated itself upon the plains of China. The world seems to

have entered again upon a migratory era of mankind, in which no longer

solitary individuals are seen groping their way over land or over sea,

in search of the excitement of adventure or the pleasure of acquiring

strange knowledge; but whole nations are seen feverous with the passion

for emigration, and throwing off their surplus swarms to settle in the

more favoured places of the earth. Ireland is emptying itself upon

America,—England and Scotland are peopling Australia; a restless host,

150,000 strong, yearly takes its march from the Continent, mostly for

the New World;—while in America itself a similar movement is ever afoot,

pressing peacefully from east to west, but not seldom dashing covetously

against the crumbling States that line the coveted shores of the Mexican

sea. We do not know if the Old World likewise, within its own bosom, is

not on the eve of exhibiting a similar movement of nations—a heave and

roll of people upon people, of north upon south—an overflowing of the

long-pent-up barbaric energies of Muscovy over the crumbling States

which fringe alike its European and Asiatic borders. But how different

the impelling motive here, and how significant of the undeveloped state

of the Russian compared with the Western world! It is the barbaric lust

of territorial extension, the rude fervour of fanaticism, the sensual

dream of luxury to be captured in the South;—in one word, it is the same

spirit that animated the hordes of an Attila or Gengis Khan that now

spreads its contagion among the Russians. They move, too, like an inert

mass. There is no _individual life_ in them, that culminating phase of

civilisation,—no spontaneous and self-reliant action in the units of the

mass. They move, not by virtue of an innate and self-directing force,

but are swayed to and fro by the will of their Czar, as vastly and

unresistingly as the slumbrous mass of ocean beneath the influence of

the moon. They press southwards from their northern homes as the vast

torpid mass of the glacier gravitates from its cradle in the snows,

crushing its slow way down to the plain, and spreading a cold blight

around in valleys that once bore the vine. The glacier soon melts when

it overpasses the zone of cultivation; so, we trust, will the power of

Russia when it strives to take hold of the seats of civilisation.

It is a fanatic but unholy crusade that now enlists the sympathies of

the Slavonic millions; but it is peace and wisdom that elsewhere foster

the spirit and guide the course of emigration. It is the effort of

individuals to better themselves. The units of society are learning to

think for themselves; and the spread of peace and tolerance, and the

triumphs of mechanical invention, are laying “the world all before them

where to choose.” It is a great thing to see this power of reflection

and self-reliance spreading among mankind; for assuredly, wherever it is

met with, it argues a stage of national development which only long

centuries of civilisation suffice to produce. Such a faculty it is,

fostered by the external circumstances which we have named above, which

is now drawing those hermits of the world, the Chinese, from their long

seclusion, and bringing them into yearly and fast-increasing contact

with Europeans. Alike in California and Australia, in our West India

colonies and in the islands of the Pacific, the Chinaman may be seen

side by side with the European, the Negro, and the Malay; and as he

immeasurably transcends the other coloured races in industry and

intelligence, so not unfrequently he may compare with the European even

in point of that business-like cast of intellect which we self-managing

Anglo-Saxons so highly prize.

The Chinese are coming out into foreign lands to meet us, and we in turn

are posting ourselves on their shores to become better acquainted with

them. In fact, of late, China has been such a centre of interest, that

almost every Power that has a navy, has a detachment of war-vessels

cruising off its shores. Great Britain, America, France, Russia (not to

speak of stray vessels from other Powers), are regularly represented by

naval squadrons in its waters; so that China, the oldest and not least

notable of existing empires, is actually revolutionising and reforming

herself under the eyes of the leading representatives of the world’s

civilisation. It is high time, then, we repeat, that Europe should know

as much as possible of this vast Power that is now for the first time

being linked into the community of nations. Every information respecting

their character and customs has now a practical and more than ordinary

value; and it is all the more wanted, inasmuch as no people appears

hitherto to have been more imperfectly comprehended by the rest of the

world. Twelve centuries before our era, we find them, by indisputable

proof, in a condition of advanced civilisation. Not to speak of the

larger items of civilisation, which we have discussed on former

occasions, they were then in possession of gold and silver—had money,

and kept accounts—had silks, dyed in many colours—leather, hemp, wine,

jewels, ivory, carriages, horses, umbrellas, earthenware, &c.;—they had

a literature, and a Board of History; and, moreover, a very complete

ceremonial of observances, the empire being regulated with all the

minute formality of a household, in conformity with its household

origin. Arrived at that condition thirty centuries ago, the Chinese are

commonly supposed to have remained nearly stationary ever since, and to

offer at this day a living picture of the condition of their nation

three thousand years ago. We recently showed, from the history of this

curious people, how fallacious was this opinion, alike in regard to

their religion and their government, and filled in with broad touch the

more salient features which have characterised the material and

intellectual career of the nation throughout its forty centuries of

vicissitude. Now, dispensing with abstract disquisitions, we desire to

present to our readers a rapid _coup-d’œil_ of the national life of

China, especially in its more practical and social aspects.

In length of years the Chinese Empire has no rival; nor is it easy to

find, in the rest of the world’s history, any States which may

profitably be paralleled with it. In point of extent and populousness,

the only ancient empire that can at all compare with it is the Roman;

yet, in almost every other respect, they differ as widely as it is

possible for any two States to do. Rome founded its empire wholly by the

sword, China mainly by the ploughshare; the former by daring soldiers,

the latter by plodding peasants. The conquests of Rome were those of a

city that came to cast its chains over a world; the triumphs of China

were those of a prolific nation, that absorbed its very conquerors. The

splendid talents of the Roman generals, the ardour of the citizens to

extend the republic, the thirst for glory, and the matchless skill and

self-devotion of the legionaries, may find nothing equal among the sons

of Han; but these latter produced heroes of peace, who instructed the

people in industry and the useful arts, and increased by their skill the

riches and population of the country. The former were masters in the art

of destroying, the latter in that of preserving and multiplying human

life. In China we must not (at least nowadays) look for the noble

sentiments and grand actions which immortalised Greece and Rome. We find

there an industrious but common-minded race, which strives stoutly to

maintain its existence, however its numbers may multiply, and which

finds no heart to sacrifice life for glory, no time to postpone business

for politics. The rice-bearing plains are the fields of their glory, the

centre of their hopes; and as they trudge forth to their never-ceasing

labours, thus they sing:—

“The sun comes forth, and we work;

The sun goes down, and we rest.

We dig wells, and we drink;

We sow fields, and we eat.

The Emperor’s power, what is it to us?”[35]

The art of agriculture is coeval with the first establishment of the

empire; and to this useful employment China mainly owes its grandeur and

populousness. The enormous numbers of the people has caused the utmost

attention to be paid to the art, and the cultivation of much of the

country approaches as near as possible to garden-farming. Some parts of

the country are mountainous and infertile, but the greater proportion of

it is fruitful, and densely studded with houses. The hills and

mountain-sides are terraced; the rocky fragments are gathered off the

slopes, and formed into retaining-walls; and the wonders of Chinese

irrigation have never been rivalled. Upon the decease of the parents,

lands are divided among the male children, and, like all Orientals, the

people cleave with great fondness to their patrimonial acres. Any one,

by simply applying to Government, may obtain permission to reclaim waste

land; and a wise exemption from all taxes, until it becomes productive,

allows the cultivator to reap a proper reward for his industry and

enterprise. The agricultural knowledge of China cannot vie with ours in

point of science; but it is far more widely diffused. A uniform system

of cultivation, the result of centuries of experience, is known to, and

practised by, every cottar in the empire; and that system is indubitably

unequalled by that of any other nation, unless it be our own. The

steeping of seeds, and drilling in sowing, are practised, and have been

so for ages; they never fail to seize promptly the proper season and

weather for their farming operations; they take every advantage of their

summer time by the system of double-cropping; and in the vitally

important matters of manuring and irrigation, as well as in making the

most of their land, they are unsurpassed, perhaps unrivalled, by any

nation in the world.

The Chinese Government has always fostered agriculture as peculiarly the

national pursuit; and well has it repaid the imperial patronage. A

country nearly as large as all Europe, and far more densely

peopled—containing, in fact, more than a third of the whole human

race—sustains them more comfortably than any similar number of men on

the face of the globe. No emigration has until now issued from its

shores, and each new myriad of the rapidly-augmenting population has

gone to increase the strength and resources of the State; while the

invidious extremes of poverty and riches (that prime bane of old States)

are there unknown, wealth being more equally divided than in any

civilised country. Undisturbed in their little farms, the people are

contented and cheerful; and with comparatively little commerce, and no

manufactures (viewed as a distinct employment), the empire has continued

for centuries thriving and unshaken by intestine commotions. The home

consumers have maintained in comfort the home producers,—the grand

opening of new markets has been found in the increase of the

population,—the only emigration has been to the hill-side and the marsh.

The French historian and philosopher, Sismondi, maintains that the real

bone and muscle of a nation is its agricultural population, and

predicted the coming ruin of the older states of Europe from the evident

decline of this class of their people; but whatever truth there may be

in his opinion, no such state of matters is likely soon to sap the

foundations of the Chinese empire. There, no millionaire manufacturers,

with machinery costing £30,000 or £40,000, overwhelm all competition,

and, by ruining the small traders who ply the shuttle as well as till

the ground, draw starving thousands to Nanking or Shanghae, feeding the

towns to plethora at the expense of the country, and accumulating from

the labour of thousands gigantic fortunes for individuals. The small

farmer rears his crop of rice, cotton, or tea, dresses it, and sends it

to market, and turns it to his own use as food or clothing; and although

he cannot succeed in laying by money, it is only in periods of famine or

inundation that he experiences the pressure of want.

“There are few sights more pleasing,” says Mr Fortune, “than a

Chinese family in the interior engaged in gathering the leaves of

the tea-plant, or, indeed, in any of their agricultural pursuits.

There is the old man—it may be the grandfather, or even the

great-grandfather—patriarch-like directing his descendants, many of

whom are in their youth and prime, while others are in their

childhood, in the labours of the field. He stands in the midst of

them, bowed down with age, but—to the honour of the Chinese as a

nation—he is always looked up to by all with pride and affection,

and his old age and grey hairs are honoured, revered, and loved.” In

the tea-districts, every cottager or small farmer has his own little

tea-garden, the produce of which supplies the wants of his family,

and the surplus brings him in a few dollars, which procure for him

the other necessaries of life. “When, after the labours of the day

are over,” says Mr Fortune, “they return to their humble and happy

homes, their fare consists chiefly of rice, fish [with which their

rivers and lakes abound], and vegetables, which they enjoy with

great zest, and are happy and contented. I really believe that there

is no country in the world where the agricultural population are

better off than they are in the north of China. Labour with them is

pleasure, for its fruits are eaten by themselves, and the rod of the

oppressor is unfelt and unknown.... For a few _cash_ (1000 or 1200

cash = 1 dollar) a Chinese can dine in a sumptuous manner upon his

rice, fish, vegetables, and tea; and I fully believe that in no

country in the world is there less real misery and want than in

China. The very beggars seem a kind of jolly crew, and are kindly

treated by the inhabitants.”

Commerce is discouraged by the Chinese Government, chiefly on account of

their jealousy of strangers; but it is a pursuit so congenial to the

national spirit that no exertions could succeed in putting it down.

Wherever money can be made, a Chinaman will brave dangers to gain it,

and will fear neither the jungles and marshes of his southern frontier,

nor the inhospitable deserts of the north and west. For a thousand years

and more, they have trafficked with the isles of the Indian Archipelago,

and for nearly twice that time their silks have found their way into

Europe. Nevertheless, the geographical situation of the country on the

one hand, and the unskilfulness of the Chinese in maritime enterprise on

the other, oppose great obstacles to their prosecution of external

commerce, so that the carrying-trade is almost entirely in the hands of

foreigners. The journey across the inhospitable steppes of Mongolia to

the nations of the west, or over the almost insurmountable Himalayas to

those of the south, is attended by too much risk and expense, in the

present state of the roads, to be prosecuted extensively; but the

Chinese eagerly avail themselves of the marts opened in recent times by

the Russian traders, and throng with their silks and tea to the grand

fairs at Maimatschin. This overland commerce with Russia commenced in

the reign of Peter the Great, by a treaty which stipulated for a

reciprocal liberty of traffic, and by virtue of which caravans on the

part of the Russian Government and individual traders used to visit

Peking; but the Muscovites exhibited so much of their native habits of

“drinking and roystering,” that, after trying the patience of the

Celestials for three-and-thirty years, they were wholly excluded. After

a temporary cessation of intercourse, however, a renewal of negotiations

took place, by which it was agreed that only Government caravans should

proceed to Peking, and Kiachta (distant four thousand miles from Moscow,

one thousand from Peking, and close to the Chinese frontier town of

Maimatschin) was built for the accommodation of private traders. This

market, which has now risen to much importance, is most resorted to in

winter. To the chief Russian merchants the trade is a species of

monopoly, and a most thriving one,—some of them being millionaires, and

living in the most sumptuous style, the “merchant princes” of the

wilderness. “At the present day,” says the _Hamburg Borsenhalle_ of 20th

July last, “the wholesale trade is in the hands of Russian merchants and

commercial companies, while the retail trade is carried on by the

Siberian tribe of Burglaetes. The wholesale trade takes place only twice

a year, and is a complete interchange of goods, of which black tea forms

the staple, and cannot be replaced by any other article. This tea is

brought to Kiachta from the northern provinces of China, and is very

superior to that exported by the English and Dutch from the southern

provinces. The green tea which comes to the market is consumed by the

Kalmucks, Tartars, and Siberians. The duty on tea yields a considerable

annual revenue, which is the sole advantage the Chinese claim from this

important article of commerce. The Chinese will take nothing but cloth

in return; and thus the consumers of tea are the persons who are the

cloth-manufacturers. The Russians themselves derive no pecuniary

advantage from this trade. They might make some profits, and the

consumers pay less for their teas, if the trade were not monopolised;

and if the tea might be exported from St Petersburg to Odessa on payment

of a moderate duty, the northern provinces of China would be obliged to

lower the price of their tea, for which they have no other outlet.”

Although Fine Art has made little progress, and is little prized, great

works, in which genius is joined to utility, are to be met with in China

on a larger scale than anywhere else. Such a work is the Great Wall,

raised by the first emperor to repel the inroads of the Nomades, and

which guards the northern frontier for the space of fifteen hundred

miles, from the shores of the Yellow Sea to Eastern Tartary. It is

carried over the highest hills, descends into the deepest valleys,

crosses upon arches over rivers, and at important passes is

doubled;—being, in fact, by far the largest structure that human labour

ever raised. A work more extraordinary still is the Imperial Canal. The

Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, who fixed the seat of government at Peking,

constructed (or rather completed) the canal, in order to remedy the

sterility of the plain in which that city stands. From the vicinity of

Peking, it extends southwards for a distance of six hundred geographical

miles,—now tunnelled through heights, now carried through lakes and over

marshes and low grounds by means of stupendous embankments,—and

exhibiting not merely a gigantic effort of labour, but sound practical

skill on the part of its constructors, in availing themselves of every

advantage that could be derived from the nature of the ground. Rivers

feed it, and ships of good size spread their sails on its bosom. It is

along this watery highway that the chief supplies are brought for the

immense population of the capital; and another great merit of the work

is, that it acts at once as an irrigator and as a drain to the country

through which it flows, from Tientsin to the Yang-tse-keang; for while

at some parts fertilising the sterile soil by diffusing its waters, at

others being carried along the lowest levels, and communicating with the

neighbouring tracts by flood-gates, it renders available for agriculture

much land that would otherwise be a useless swamp.

Education in China, as we have seen, is directed almost exclusively to

the inculcation of moral and constitutional principles; and with such

good effect, that nowhere in the East are the social relations so well

understood and preserved. Class has never risen against class, and the

religious apathy of the people has prevented any war of creeds. This

social harmony has had the best effects upon the welfare of the people,

by rendering an iron rule unnecessary on the part of the Government.

However absolute the administration may be, the great mass of the people

live quietly and happily, enjoying the fruits of their industry. The

legislation is disfigured by an excessively minute attention to

trifles,—an unavoidable result of the system of regulating the mind of

the people through the agency of external observances; but the code is,

on the whole, a clear and concise series of enactments, savouring

throughout of practical judgment and European good sense; and if not

always conformable to our liberal notions of legislation, in general

approaching them more nearly than the codes of most other nations. The

laws are more generally known and equally administered than in the other

States of Asia,—wealth, comfort, and cheerful industry more equally

diffused; and Mr Ellis pronounces the Celestial Empire superior to them

all in the arts of government and the general aspect of society. Sir

George Staunton says that the condition of the people is “wholly

inconsistent with the hypothesis of a very bad government or a very

vicious state of society,” and conceived that he could trace almost

everywhere the unequivocal signs of an industrious, thriving, and

contented people. But we may go further than this, and fully concur with

Mr Davis that “there is a business-like character about the Chinese,

which assimilates them in a striking degree to the most intelligent

nations of the West; and there is less difference [in this respect?]

between them and the British, French, and Americans, than between these

and the inhabitants of Spain and Portugal, whose proneness to stolid

bigotry and Oriental laziness was perhaps in part imbibed from the

Arabs.”

In regard to slaves, the code metes out less equal justice; but a like

one-sidedness has defaced the legislation of every country—and slavery,

as it exists in China, is infinitely milder than anywhere else either in

the East or West. It is not superior humanity and generosity which

occasions this difference: it results from the social condition of the

nation. Slavery is the apprenticeship which, in one shape or another,

uncivilised man has had to undergo in all countries before becoming

capable of sustained industry and self-government. In this state he

falls under the power of his more civilised fellows, and obtains food

and protection in exchange for freedom; and it is only when he has

raised himself above the indolence and improvidence of savage life that

liberty becomes beneficial even for himself. Resembling the western half

of Europe, the whole Chinese nation is industrious, and has acquired

that relish for the artificial wants of civilised life which tends so

greatly to man’s elevation, and which is so little felt elsewhere (save

in some of the highest classes) in the regions of the East and South. No

political or social distinctions of rank or caste exist in China, and

education is provided by the State for all classes. On these accounts

there is _no servile class_; and those who have lost or bartered their

freedom resemble their masters in everything but wealth, and are treated

rather as menials than as serfs. Slavery exists in China not as a relic

of barbarism, nor from the prevalence of caste or the absence of

industry, but simply, it would appear, as the effect of a redundant

population: it is a man’s last shift for employment.

We can give a most pleasing anecdote in connection with this point,

which recently appeared in the _Java Bode_ newspaper, published at

Batavia, where there is a large Chinese population—which shows at once

the good feeling of the Chinese in regard to the unfortunate objects of

slavery, and the remarkable industry and self-relying spirit of the

slaves themselves. In giving an account of a sale of slaves at the

Chinese camp, it says:—The slaves, who were twelve in number, having

been placed upon the table of exposition, arranged in four lots, rattled

some money in their hands, and addressed a few words, timidly and in low

tones, to the assembly. A person who acted as their agent here stepped

forward, and stated that his clients, having accumulated by long and

painful labours some small savings, solicited the favour of being

allowed to make a bidding for the purchase of their own persons. No

opposition was offered; and the first lot of three, being put up to

auction, made an offer, through their agent, of forty francs. No advance

being made on this sum, the slaves were knocked down to themselves. The

next lot, encouraged by their predecessors’ success, offered only

twenty-four francs for themselves. The public preserved the same

silence, and they likewise became their own purchasers. The third lot

took the hint, and were even more fortunate, picking themselves up, a

decided bargain, for the modest sum of ten francs! The _Java Bode_

rightly sees in these facts signs of a great advance in civilisation

among the Chinese, who constituted the great majority of the persons

present.

Superficial writers on China judge of the whole nation by what they see

of the population at Canton; and are profuse in their charges of lying,

treachery, and inhumanity,—as if it were even possible for three hundred

and sixty millions of human beings to be nothing but one black mass of

moral deformity! The monstrousness of the idea ought to have been its

own refutation. Such writers might as well conclude that the whole abyss

of ocean is a turbid mass, because its fringing waves are “gross with

sand.” In truth, their conclusions are as unjust as if one were to judge

of our own nation solely by the doings of the wreckers of Cornwall or

the mob of London. For the inhabitants of Canton are termed the

“Southern boors” by their own countrymen; and it may safely be stated of

the people of Fokien and the southern coasts of China, with whom alone

foreigners come in contact, that they are all more or less addicted to

piracy and smuggling, and have adopted the nefarious habits which

commerce invariably engenders when carried on between nations who

despise, and whose only desire is to overreach one another. The

inadequacy of the ordinary data for judging of Chinese character is at

once perceived by the few travellers who have got glimpses of the

interior, or of those parts of the country where the manners of the

people are unaltered by contact with foreigners. We have already quoted

Mr Fortune’s pleasing picture of cottar-life in the interior, and on the

general question he says:—“The natives of the southern towns and all

along the coast, at least as far north as Chekiang, richly deserve the

bad character which every one gives them; being remarkable for their

hatred to foreigners and conceited notions of their own importance,

besides abounding in characters of the very worst description, who are

nothing else than thieves and pirates. But the character of the Chinese

as a nation must not suffer from a partial view of this kind; for it

must be recollected that, in every country, the most lawless characters

are amongst those who inhabit seaport towns, and who come in contact

with natives of other countries: and unfortunately we must confess that

European nations have contributed their share to make these people what

they are. In the north of China, and more particularly inland, the

natives are entirely different. There are, doubtless, bad characters and

thieves amongst them too: but generally the traveller is not exposed to

insult; and the natives are quiet, civil, and obliging.” Lord Jocelyn,

who was with our fleet during the late war, and who landed on various

points of the coast, states, as the experience of his rambles among the

villagers, that a kind word to a child, or any little notice taken of

the young, will at once ingratiate a stranger with this humane and

simple-minded people. Mr Abel, also, (one of Lord Amherst’s retinue) in

like manner testifies to the simple kindness of the country people. The

nation at large (thanks to their education) are remarkable for the

virtues of sobriety and filial reverence,—instances of noble generosity

in individuals are said not to be infrequent,—and we may add that no

people in the world, unless it be the French, are so ready to take

notice of and applaud the casual utterance of noble sentiments. In fine,

Mr Lay says, that “no man can deny the Chinese the honourable character

of being good subjects—though, from the venality of their magistrates in

general, they must often be exposed to many kinds of usage that tempt

them to throw off allegiance.” And he attributes their steady obedience

to constituted authority, not to a tameness of disposition that disposes

a man to take kicks without feeling the gall of indignation, but to “a

habitual sentiment of respect and a share of sterling good sense, that

lead him to see and choose what is really best for his own interest.”

We have said that there are no separate castes among the Chinese; but

one of the most curious features that strikes a stranger in their social

life is the division of the people into clans, somewhat resembling the

clanships of the Scottish Highlanders. There are altogether about 454 of

these clans, each of which has its peculiar surname; but no jealous line

of demarcation is allowed to be kept up between these different septs

(some of whom number a million of souls), for, by a wise though somewhat

stringent provision, every man is required to seek a bride in a

different clan from his own,—thus acquiring two surnames. These clans

are results of the Patriarchal or Family system, which forms the basis

of the whole political and social arrangements in China. This system may

seem a very narrow and illiberal one to us enlightened Westerns, and

especially to our Transatlantic brethren, among whom the fifth

commandment is but little regarded; but its influence upon the social

relations in China has been unquestionably good. A Chinese father is a

little emperor in his own household; he is held responsible in some

degree for their conduct, and is invested with unlimited power over

them, so that even the punishment of death is hardly beyond his

prerogative. Yet abuses of power are at least as rare there as here. “I

have reason to believe,” says Mr Lay, “that the sway exercised by

Chinese parents is seldom burdensome, and that their will and pleasure

are enforced, for the most part, with great mildness.” And if we seek to

judge of the system by its fruits at large, we find that the duties of

mutual love and mutual help are fully recognised, as incumbent upon all

who are within the circle of blood or affinity; while the hilarities of

family-feasts, or the sorrows of family-mourning, are entered into with

a keenness of relish, or an acuteness of feeling, which leaves the

Chinese perhaps without a parallel in the world. “Fear God” is a precept

of which the modern Chinese know little or nothing; but “Love, honour,

and obey your parents,” is the fundamental commandment of their moral

system,—and to say or do anything against it, is as shocking and

disgusting to their feelings as blasphemy to those of a Christian. “The

practice of infanticide,” says Mr Meadows, speaking of Canton, “exists

here, as the bodies of infants floating occasionally on the river

sufficiently prove; but it may be fairly doubted whether there is much

more of it than in England,” where the crime is punished with death, and

where, of course, every means is taken to conceal it; “and often having

remarked instances of _deformed female_ children being treated with

constant and evident affection by their parents, I am inclined to

believe that when infants are put to death, it is solely because their

parents are altogether unable to support them.” And Mr Lay says, that

the _rare_ occurrence of dead bodies of children being found in the

Canton river “proves that, among a swarming population of indigent

people, such deeds are none of their customary doings.”

The Chinese are a cheerful light-hearted race, well trained to social

duties, and with no proclivity to the melancholy of the southern nations

of Europe, or to the John-Bull tendency towards reserve and isolation.

Social feeling—or good-humour, mildness of disposition, and a

good-natured propensity to share in the mirth and hilarity of others,

are seen wherever one meets with a company of Chinese. To live in

society is a Chinaman’s meat and drink. In a company of his fellows he

is something,—by himself, nothing. Men of study and retirement are to be

found in China, but by far the greater number seem to have their hearts

set upon social delights and the celebration of public festivity. And

what most strikes the spectator at such meetings is, the _respect_ which

every one is so anxious to pay to all around him,—(another point in

which the Chinese nation is most nearly paralleled by the French). Nor

are such attentions the frigid offspring of mere formality. “Apart from

business,” says Mr Lay, “the intercourse of natives in China is made up

of little acts of homage. The rules of relative duty command an

individual to regard a neighbour as an elder brother, and thence

entitled to the respect belonging to such eldership. These displays of

veneration are not occasioned, then, by dread or hope of gain, but are

the spontaneous results of a propriety essential to the character of the

people,” and strongly developed by their domestic training and the

teaching of their schools. In walking abroad, for instance, the stranger

may wonder what two gentlemen can have so suddenly found to dispute

about; but he soon perceives that each of them is severally refusing to

advance a step till the other has set the example, and consented to go

ahead!

On the other hand, it must be allowed that most of the loftier qualities

of our nature seem to be deficient among the Chinese. The feeling of

patriotism, at least nowadays, is almost unknown,—partly, it may be,

owing to the immense size of the empire, and the imperfect intercourse

kept up between the several provinces. Loyalty, as we understand the

feeling, apparently never at any time had much hold upon the Chinese

mind. Reason, rather than emotion, is the prominent feature of their

mental constitution; and although they have at all times entertained a

profound regard for their sovereign, that regard had reference to the

office, not the man, and is quite different from that chivalrous

devotion to the monarch’s person which plays so prominent a part in the

history of European struggles. Self-denial and self-devotion, in

fact—that fundamental basis of the noblest of human virtues—rare

everywhere, is _very_ rare in China. Even peace has its disadvantages.

Virtues, like talents, require congenial circumstances to develop them;

and probably the long reign of public tranquillity in China—where for

nine centuries it has hardly been broken save at intervals of two

hundred years—has helped to numb the courageous and masculine sentiment

of self-devotion, and allowed the national mind to “settle on its lees.”

Pleasure, money, sensuality,—these are now the objects that most greatly

engross a Chinese. “The Chinese,” says Mr Lay, “are lovers of pleasure,

from the greatest to the least. They study ease and comfort in a way

that leaves them, as a nation, without a rival in the art of ministering

to sensual gratification.” This proneness to sensual indulgence is

unhappily increased by the narrow spirit in which certain portions of

their legislation are conceived,—the rich not being allowed to expend

their superfluous wealth in the erection of elegant mansions, (that

being looked upon as a misdirection of money from more useful purposes);

nor dare they indulge in much public munificence, lest they attract the

covetous eyes of the generally extortionate and unscrupulous mandarins.

“A Chinese,” says Mr Lay, “is licentious in the general turn of his

ideas, and makes a public display of those forbidden pleasures which in

many countries are somewhat screened amidst the shades of retirement.

The floating abodes for ladies of pleasure are generally of the gayest

kind, and are consequently the first thing to attract the traveller’s

attention as he draws near the provincial city of Canton.” The _auri

sacra fames_ is not less strong in the breast of a Celestial. “At a very

early age,” says Mr Lay, “the love of money is implanted in his nature:

indeed, one of the first lessons a mother teaches a child is to hold out

its hand for a bit of coin.” Money, says Gutzlaff, is the idol of the

Chinese. “It is the national spirit, the public sentiment, the chief

good of high and low”—the higher classes being as eager to obtain it in

order to gratify their sensual inclinations, as the poor to procure

food.

To call a man a liar is, in England, and in the European world

generally, the surest way to provoke anger; but such an epithet has but

little weight attached to it in China. This is partly owing to the fact

that “white lies” have there a recognised and reputable existence not

openly accorded to them elsewhere. In the eyes of a Chinese, as in the

code of the Jesuits, a lie in itself is not absolutely criminal, and it

may, on the contrary, be very meritorious. According to Confucius, a lie

told by a child to benefit a parent is deserving of praise; and a

Jeannie Deans, or the stern old father in Mr Warren’s _Now and Then_, so

far from being held models of religion, would be regarded, the one as a

stubborn fanatic, and the other as the most heartless and unnatural of

parents. But another, and, we suspect, a much more powerful cause of

this want of veracity among the Chinese, is their system of government.

Here, as throughout Asia generally, Despotism—or, in other words, an

Executive power from which there is no proper appeal—generates mendacity

in the people, as their sole refuge from irresponsible Power. Duplicity

is the resource to which Weakness naturally betakes itself; and it is

universally adopted wherever the decrees of Government officials are

felt to be unjust as well as unappealable. Everywhere the result is the

same; and in this, as in many other respects, a perfect parallel might

be drawn between those two vastest empires of modern times, the Chinese

and the Russian. In the latter empire, as in the former, the vastness of

the country and consequent impossibility of an efficient surveillance

over the host of officials, joined to the absence of municipal

institutions and a free press to act as checks upon local tyranny,

render it most difficult to detect or repress abuses of power on the

part of the Government officers. And the consequence in both countries

may be told in the words of Alison, applied to Russia:—“So universal is

the dread of authority, that it has moulded the national character.

Dissimulation is universal; and, like the Greeks under the Mussulman

yoke, the Russians have become perfect adepts in all the arts by which

talent eludes the force of authority, and astuteness escapes the

discoveries of power.” And we suspect we ought to add, in justice to the

Chinese, that this disposition has been impressed upon them, as upon the

Russians, by the invasion of the Tartar hordes, which in both countries

reduced the native race to subjection for three long centuries.

In China, however, the domination of the Tartars has never been in any

degree so complete as it was in Russia; and even among the maritime

population, with whom foreigners are brought most in contact, and among

whom lying is probably most prevalent, there exists a check which is

found sufficient for the transaction of all matters of ordinary

importance. Every great, busy, and closely-connected society (which

Russia is not) requires some bond of mutual trust; and this is found, in

China, in the custom of _guaranteeing_, which pervades all domestic and

mercantile relations. Mr Meadows states it as a fact that he has never

known an instance in which a Chinese openly violated a guaranty known to

have been given by him; and though, under strong temptations, they will

sometimes try to evade its fulfilment, yet such instances are extremely

rare, and they generally come promptly forward to meet all the

consequences of their responsibility. “A Chinaman,” says Mr Lay, “is a

man of business, and therefore understands the value of truth.... The

standard of honesty is perhaps as high in China as in any other

commercial country; and strangers who have known this people during the

longest space, speak in the best terms of their integrity. Thieves of a

most dexterous kind, and rogues of every description, are plentiful in

China, because she has a swarming population to give them birth,—but

they are not numerous enough to affect a general estimate of the

national character.”

The imperfections of human language render it a difficult matter to give

a description, at once short and correct, of national character. Thus it

is both true and false to say that the Chinese possess a high degree of

fortitude. They bear pain or adversity without murmuring or despondency;

and, taken individually, they perhaps possess as much constitutional or

animal courage as any other specimens of our race. But they are

deficient in that courage which is based on self-reliance, and which

enables a man to confront danger with a ready intrepidity—because their

institutions and education are as unfavourable to its development as

those of the Anglo-Americans are singularly propitious. They possess a

great command over their tempers, and instances are common of their

bearing, with the greatest apparent equanimity, insults and injuries

which would make a European ungovernable; and this proceeds not from

cowardice, but from their really regarding self-command as a necessary

part of civilisation, and passionate or hasty conduct as indecent, and

giving evidence of a low nature. The readiness they evince to yield to

the force of reason is another quality for which, says Mr Meadows, “the

Chinese certainly deserve to be considered a highly civilised people.”

They settle their disputes more by argument than by violence (a strange

thing in the East); and a Chinese placard posted at the street-corners,

exposing the unreasonable (_i. e._ unequitable) conduct of a party in

any transaction is, if the want of equity be sufficiently proven, to the

full as effective, if not more so, than a similar exposure of an

Englishman in a newspaper. Bullies seem to be kept in check by the force

of public opinion, and the Chinese neither fight duels, nor, though

murders occur as in England, can they be said to assassinate or poison.

Finally, we may round off this _précis_ of Chinese character in the

words of Mr Lay:—“It is an abuse of terms to say that they are a highly

moral people, but we may affirm that the moral sense is in many

particulars highly refined among them. Respect to parents and elders,

obedience to law, chastity, kindness, economy, prudence, and

self-possession, are the never-failing themes for remark and

illustration.”

No people in the world consume so little butcher-meat as the Chinese;

and, unlike the Eastern nations—such as the Jews, Hindoos, Parsees, and

Mohammedans generally—their favourite meat is pork. In fact in China, as

in other parts of the world, the cottar-system of land-holding is found

unfavourable to the rearing of horses, cattle, or sheep, but quite

adapted (as witness Ireland) for the rearing of pigs. The national

system of agriculture, like almost everything else in China, is based

upon the strictly utilitarian principle of turning everything to the

greatest account. We do not pretend to settle off-hand here how far the

stimulating diet of animal food is necessary or advantageous to mankind.

We would simply remark that butcher-meat is matter in a more highly

organised form, and more nearly assimilated in composition to our own

frames than vegetable food. It is in diet what alcohol is in drink; and

the nations who most indulge in it—such as the British, the

Anglo-Americans, and savages who live by the chase, (we beg pardon for

the unflattering conjunction!)—are generally as remarkable for gloomy

strength and perseverance, as the more vegetarian nations are for

cheerful quickness and volatility. But the preference which from time

immemorial has been accorded to grain-crops in China is based upon the

principle (of which our free-trade authorities are too forgetful in

their admonitions to “plough less and graze more”), that grain is the

cheapest form in which food can be produced, and that a much more

numerous population can be maintained in comfort by tillage than by

pasturage. Sheep have been justly styled “the devourers of men;” and the

Chinese monarch who first turned the people from pastoral life, and

taught them the civilising science of agriculture, is still, after the

lapse of more than four thousand years, venerated throughout the empire

by the title of “the divine Husbandman.” Fish, which abound in the

numerous lakes with which the country is studded, and rice and other

kinds of vegetable produce, form the staple of the national diet. From

stern necessity, as well as from a wise and unparalleled economy,

everything is turned to full account, and even hair-cuttings and parings

of all kinds are made matter of traffic,—while everything nutritive,

including “rats and mice, and such small deer,” (however unclean,

according to European notions), are searched out and eaten for food.

Opium is much in use; but both the perniciousness of its effects, and

the extent to which it is indulged in, have been overstated by most

writers on the subject. The misery caused by it is never to be compared

to the plague of drunkenness, which is the bane of our own country.

“Redness of the eyes,” as a mark of intoxication, is very conspicuous in

the Chinese, as it was in the days of Solomon among the Jews; and if you

see two Chinamen walking hand in hand in the street, says Mr Lay, it is

ten to one that they are both flustered with drink!

The Chinese, like most Asiatics, do not dance for pleasure, nor are

their unmelodious voices formed for song. Their favourite amusements are

games of chance,—in which, perhaps, they out-do all Asiatics. The grand

aim of a Chinaman, as we have said, is _to enjoy himself_; and this

colours even his gravest doings. With him, banqueting and religious

ceremonies are the same thing, and he would never keep any sacred

festival if he could not enjoy himself. No festival is without its play,

and only a few temples are without a stage; and so fond are the people

of theatricals, that they will attend a whole night to them, without

showing the least weariness, and will afterwards recount with ecstasy

what they have seen. The people in general never pray, nor have they any

forms of prayer; and the Mandarins, on public occasions, only recite a

formula, in the shape of a simple message, to the idols, but never

address them in their own words. The affairs of this life are ever

uppermost in the mind of a Chinese; and long life, wealth, and male

children, are the great objects of desire. Nothing is regarded with so

much horror as death—gloomy death, after which their souls go to wander

cheerless among the genii; and strange to say, the elixir of life seems

to have been more generally and more perseveringly sought after in

reasoning and materialistic China than among the most spiritual and

imaginative nations of mankind.

“Polygamy,” says Mr Lay, “is not practised by all, and is seldom

indulged in till the husband is advanced in years. It appears that by

far the greater number among the rich, as well as all among the poor,

reap the solaces of connubial life without suffering this hemlock to

grow in their furrows. A few, from the surfeit of too much ease and

prosperity, indulge in this practice, and a few more have recourse to it

for the sake of building up their house with an heir, or a more numerous

progeny;” while on the other side, it is fostered by “the anxiety of

parents to see their daughters provided for in the houses of the great,

and to reap a personal advantage from noble alliances.” For untiring

industry, cheerfulness of temper, fidelity to their husbands, and care

of their offspring, the poor women are every way exemplary. Any one who

visits China will find proofs of this wherever he turns his eyes, and a

traveller has only to lay his hand upon the head of a little child to

earn applause from a whole crowd of bystanders.

Constancy, habit of respect, and the social feeling are easily

recognisable in the character of the Chinese women. Chinese stories are

full of examples of love that knows no bounds. “There is only one

heaven,” said a forlorn maiden, when her parents upbraided her for

spending her days in sorrowful libations of salt tears at the tomb of

her lover, “and he was that heaven to me!” “A native of the United

States,” says Mr Lay, “married a Chinese female, who had never felt the

benefits of education, and therefore could scarcely have learnt to

cultivate this sentiment by lessons from those who were older than

herself. She accompanied her husband to America, and afterwards back

again to Macao, where a friend of mine paid her lord a visit. On his

return, I asked him how she demeaned herself towards her better half.

‘With great respect,’ was the answer. And this testimony in her favour

was not solitary; for the captain who conveyed the pair across the

Atlantic declared he had never met with such passengers before, and that

the wife rendered the services of a stewardess unnecessary in the cabin,

and with her own hands kept everything in an admirable state of order

and neatness.” When a stranger sees that a Chinese lady of the house is

not entitled to receive any civilities or acts of courtesy from the

friend of her husband, and forgets that this interdict is founded upon

motives of propriety, consecrated by the usage of the earliest times, he

is very apt to think her slighted, and that those apartments which the

Chinese have decorated with so many flowery names are but a sort of

prison. This is a great mistake, however, and the women of China are not

only exempt from that rigid seclusion which prevails elsewhere in the

East; but are treated much more nearly on terms of equality with their

husbands. There is nothing abject or mean, either in principle or

practice, in the deference which is paid, among high and low alike, to

husbands; and “the air of a Chinawoman,” says Mr Lay, “has a majesty

about it which is only compatible with sentiments of freedom; and the

tone of her voice, and the glance of her eye indicate a consciousness

that she was not born to be despised.”

The existing monuments of ancient civilisation in China are not of the

same kind as those of Egypt and Assyria, of Greece and Rome. Time has

spared the mighty structures of these latter empires, as if in

compensation for having buried the nations that reared them; but in

China, where the dynasties have succeeded one another without

interruption, and the people have gone on increasing in numbers, down to

our own day, the wars which have swept over it, and the revolutions

which have shaken it, have destroyed almost all the monuments which

would have attested its former magnificence. We refer particularly to

the great revolution effected by the Emperor Che-hoang-te, (about 246

A.C.), who, for political purposes, ordered the destruction of every

monument of the past, whether in metal, in stone, or on paper,—a

proscription which lasted for nearly a century, and which left

comparatively little to be regained by the most persevering researches

of after ages. Nevertheless, the early ages of the Chinese empire seem

to have been distinguished by not a little science, and many rare

discoveries. In their carefully kept ancient annals, we have full

particulars of the circumstances attending an eclipse of the sun, which

happened 2155 years before Christ; and in the reign of Shun, a century

before this, we read of “the instrument adorned with precious stones,

which represented the stars, and the movable tube which served to

observe them”—words which plainly indicate a celestial sphere, and a

telescope, of some kind or other. After speaking of the discussions

which took place in Europe last century, in regard to the high antiquity

of astronomical observations in China, M. Pauthier remarks,—“All that we

know of the reigns of the philosophical emperors, Yao, Shun, and Yu, and

of the state of astronomical science in their time, justifies the

supposition that, in the days of those emperors, sure methods were known

for calculating beforehand the precise date of eclipses of the sun and

moon, and all that concerned the calendar.” Another piece of knowledge

possessed by the ancient Chinese, which is calculated to astonish our

modern astronomers and mathematicians, is that not merely of the general

spherical shape of the earth, but of its oblate form, in consequence of

the flattening of the poles. We have not space to set forth the grounds

we have for holding it probable that they really were acquainted with

this recondite fact in physics; we must hasten on to add that the

_Sacred Book of Annals_ mentions facts which indirectly prove that

music, poetry, and painting were known from the earliest historic times

of China, and we know for certain that in the days of Confucius, the

first of those arts was carefully studied, and apparently highly

developed. Gunpowder was known four centuries before our era, and we

read not only of this “devouring fire,” but of “fireboxes,”

“fire-tubes,” and “globes containing the fire of heaven,”—which latter

expression, by its allusion to lightning, seems to indicate as if

powder, even in those days, was used as something more than a mere toy.

A knowledge of the properties of the magnet or loadstone is another

thing in which the Chinese were some two thousand or more years in

advance of us Europeans; and the art of printing (by means of wooden

blocks—xylography) was in use among them six centuries before anything

of the kind was thought of elsewhere.

The character of Chinese literature may be guessed from what we have

said of their system of education, which eschews speculation, and

attends to little else than the precepts of public and private morality.

The grandest, or we may say, the only grand, achievements of their

literature are in the department of practical politics and morals; and

next to this are their annals and statistical reports upon the various

provinces of the empire. Poetry is much studied by the educated classes

in early life for the sake of obtaining command of language and elegance

of expression, the latter of which is highly valued in the

communications and epistles of the government officials; but the Chinese

temperament possesses little of the _vis poetica_; and of the millions

of Mandarins who have learned to rhyme, very few indeed have written

anything that would pass as mediocre in Europe. They have a good command

of poetic figures and expressions, and their descriptive pieces and

moral odes are fair productions; but that is all that can be said in

their favour. Historical writings occupy a prominent place in their

literature, and the greatest pains are taken to insure accuracy of

statement; but these works are mere annals or chronologies, and have no

pretensions to those intellectual and artistic qualities which

distinguish the Livys and Xenophons, the Gibbons and Humes of ancient

and modern Europe. It is to the credit of China that it has had a drama

from a very early period, although we cannot speak particularly as to

its merits. The writing of novels, also, dates as far back as the third

century, and seems to be a department of literature very congenial to

the Chinese mind. Such works exist in great numbers, and amongst much

trash there are some very able productions.

In the appreciation of beauty, the Chinese are below any other nation

that ever emerged from barbarism. Their painting is of a very

commonplace description,—though not so bad, we believe, as it is

generally supposed to be in this country; and their only notion of

sculpture is, to represent a thing lusty in order that it may look

grand. Their architecture, says Mr Barrow, “is void of taste, grandeur,

beauty, solidity, or convenience; their houses are merely tents [an

exaggeration]; and there is nothing magnificent even in the palace of

the emperor.” One of the few notable exceptions to this remark is the

celebrated Porcelain Pagoda at Nanking, which Du Halde thought “the most

solid, remarkable, and magnificent structure in the eastern world.” For

this want of beauty in their buildings, some excuse may be found in the

circumstance that the law does not permit them to deviate from the

established rules, and that any Mandarin who should venture to indulge

an architectural fancy of his own would quickly draw down upon himself

the vengeance of the Board of Rites; but “when there’s a will there’s a

way,” and had the general taste ever advanced beyond the tent-shaped

domiciles of their early ancestors, the administration of the law would

hardly have proved an insurmountable barrier to improvement.

However flattering to the Chinese some of the preceding statements may

be, it will be seen, on the whole, that they by no means hold a high

place in regard to might of intellect. The discoverers of many important

facts, and inventors of many useful arts, they yet seem as if they had

stumbled upon them by chance, and were unable to appreciate their value;

and the highly civilised race who, ages ago, were familiar with

astronomy and printing, gunpowder and the magnetic needle, are now

incomparably surpassed in their use by nations comparatively of

yesterday. “Their mechanical contrivances,” says Mr Wade, “remain but as

monuments of an originality which seems to have exhausted itself by its

earlier efforts. They appear never to have investigated the principles

of the discoveries by which the requirements of their agriculture,

architecture, or navigation, were first satisfied. The means which their

genius suggested to meet their immediate wants they adopted, and,

without the aid of theory, perfected—in some instances, to a degree not

surpassed, if attained, by the most scientific of nations; but errors

and defects were left untouched; no spirit of inquiry quickened the

dormant powers of their reason, and the lack of a habit of reflection

prevented their pushing their invention beyond a certain necessary

point.” There is something stunted or microscopic in the intellect of

the Chinese, which leads them to magnify trifles, yet to be blind when

great facts stare them in the face,—to keep the steam-engine a toy and

gunpowder a plaything, yet to spend an infinity of skill and patience

upon the manufacture of one of their ivory “puzzles.” Excellent in

imitation, and well adapted for details, they are yet deficient in that

highest quality of genius, which grasps a subject at once in all its

bearings—which reasons outwards and upwards from the centre-object of

contemplation, and which discerns in it its latent powers and the uses

to which they may be applied,—which sees in the vapour of a kettle the

embryo of the mighty steam-engine, and in the fall of an apple the

gravitating force that sustains the universe.

There cannot be a doubt, however, that the Chinese character has never

yet had fair play. It has never had such advantages as those enjoyed by

the nations of Europe, or indeed by every civilised community of modern

times. We will not speak of the over-population, and consequent

ceaseless and absorbing struggle for the necessaries of life, which ever

tends to act injuriously upon the moral and intellectual qualities of

the majority of the people,—by extinguishing all high aspirations, and

bending down the soul in slavery to the wants of the moment; for that

over-population is not peculiar to China, and has, moreover, the

attendant, though hardly compensating benefit of sharpening the national

wits, and placing a large supply of cheap labour at the disposal of

capital. We would rather point out the following peculiarity which

affects this people alone of the nations of the earth, and which must

ever be kept in mind by those who would correctly appreciate China’s

place in universal history.

The Chinese empire belongs to the ancient—indeed, we ought to say to the

primitive, world. It has long survived the empires of Egypt and Assyria,

and the kingdoms of ancient India,—yet it is with these States alone

that the isolated civilisation of China can fairly be compared. Like

them, China has reared a civilisation for herself, without any help from

without. Throughout her unparalleled existence of more than forty

centuries, she has been a world to herself. No influx of new ideas, no

inspection of other civilisation than her own, has been granted to her.

She has grown up like a Crusoe and his children and grandchildren, upon

a solitary island,—forced ever to compare themselves by themselves, and

never enjoying the rare privilege, and help to improvement, to “see

ourselves as others see us.” We Europeans of the present day—in this age

of “running to and fro upon the earth”—are privileged to behold the

endless variety of life, manners, and institutions with which the world

is stored—to judge of them by their several effects, as revealed in the

pages of history, and to draw from them their moral; thus benefiting by

the experience of a whole world, and perfecting ourselves upon the model

of the best of our race. Moreover, the blood of a dozen different tribes

of mankind runs in our veins (as was the case on a smaller scale in

ancient Greece), producing a richly-blended nature, excelling in all

departments, whether of thought or action—producing now a Shakespeare

and now a Napoleon, now a Hildebrand and now a Howard, now a Richard

Cœur-de-Lion and now a Peter the Hermit, now a Luther and now a Mozart,

now a Cromwell and now a Robespierre, now a Scott, a Watt, a Burns, a

Dickens, a Kean, or a Grimaldi. China, on the contrary, presents but one

phase of human nature,—but to that phase it has done marvellous justice.

Good sense is its only idol—practical usefulness its prime test; but we

have yet to learn that the former of these qualities has ever been more

wisely or so perseveringly worshipped, or the latter been so

unflinchingly and universally applied.

An attentive observation seems to indicate that this most ancient of

empires, for long stationary in power and intellect, has of late been in

many respects retrograding. “The arts once peculiarly their own,” says

Mr Wade, “have declined;—neither their silks nor their porcelain, in

their own estimation, equal in quality those of former years.” And Mr

Fortune arrives at a similar conclusion from the signs of decay which he

met with in his wanderings. “There can be no doubt,” he says, “that the

Chinese empire arrived at its highest state of perfection many years

ago, and since then it has been rather retrograding than advancing. Many

of the northern cities, evidently once in the most flourishing

condition, are now in a state of decay, or in ruins; the pagodas which

crown the distant hills are crumbling to pieces, and apparently are

seldom repaired; the spacious temples are no longer as they used to be

in former days; even the celebrated temples on Poo-too-San (an island

near Chusan), to which, as to Jerusalem of old, the natives came

flocking to worship, show all the signs of having seen better days. And

from this I conclude that the Chinese, as a nation, are retrograding.”

Were this falling off only visible in the case of the temples, it might

be wholly accounted for by the increasing apathy or scepticism of the

people in regard to their religion; but, in truth, these signs of decay

extend into almost every department of the State. And, writing

immediately before the present rebellion broke out, Mr Wade says, “With

a fair seeming of immunity from invasion, sedition, or revolt, leave is

taken to consider this vast empire as surely, though slowly, decaying.

It has, in many respects, retrograded since the commencement of the

present dynasty, and in none that we are aware of has it made any

sensible progress.”

It would be a great error, however, to suppose that this vast empire is

now stooping irretrievably to a fall. The whole tenor of its past

history forbids the supposition. Again and again has it reformed

itself;—again and again has it passed through the purifying furnace of

suffering and convulsion, and re-emerged firm as before. Its periodic

convulsions are the healthy efforts of nature to throw off the

corruptions which ease engenders in the system; and however much

temporary suffering may attend the present, like every other of its

score of preceding revolutions, the resultant good will ultimately atone

for all. China will never fall. Its homogeneousness, and the

unconquerable vastness of its population, endow it with an earthly

immortality. We have said that it lacks the variety of Europe; but in

that variety, be it noted, there lurks political weakness, as much as

intellectual strength. Every unit of Chinese society is homogeneous. The

whole population are _one_—in blood, sentiments, and language;—and hence

it contains none of those discordant elements, those unwillingly-yoked

parts, which proved the destruction of the old “universal empires,” and

which are destined ere long to annihilate the present territorial system

of Europe. China, in fact, has ever been, and is, what European Germany

and Slavonia, and every other great State of the future will be—a

_Race-Empire_;—and therefore indestructible. The Monguls may reign in it

for eighty years, or the Mantchoos for two hundred,—and even then only

by adopting the political and social institutions of the natives. But as

time runs on, the wheel ever turns; one after another the foreign hosts

are chased from the land, and a native dynasty is destined still to

wield the sceptre of the Flowery Land.

But we must say more than this in regard to the fortunes of China. What

it has hitherto wanted is, _new ideas_,—and now it is about to get them.

In old times, nations could hardly inoculate their neighbours with their

ideas save by conquest, and new mental life was only produced after a

temporary death of liberty. It is otherwise nowadays, and China is

likely to benefit by the change. As long as she was feeble, and as long

as the sword was the only civiliser, Providence kept her shut in from

the prowess of the restless Western nations. But now that her people

have grown like the sands on the sea-shore for multitude, and that steam

has become the peaceful “locomotive of principles,” China is opened.

Often as she has reformed herself before, the present is her true

second-birth. She will now obtain those new ideas of which she has

hitherto been starved, and will enter into ever-memorable union with the

rest of the civilised world. The energy and science of the Anglo-Saxons

will penetrate the empire, and the Chinese will not be slow to avail

themselves of the new lights. Aversion to change, when such change is

recommended by manifest utility, is not an original element of the

Chinese character,—as we learn on the authority of Jesuit writers two

centuries ago, before the advent to power of the Tartars, and their

jealous exclusion of foreigners. And then, what country in the world can

compare with China as a field for the triumphs of mechanical enterprise!

Its vast rivers and canals present unrivalled scope for

steam-navigation; and its wide plains and valley-lands offer matchless

facilities for railways. And then all this amidst the densest and

perhaps busiest population in the world. The amount of internal

travelling in China is such, that we are assured by those who have

penetrated into the interior, that there are continuous streams of

travellers on horse, on foot, and on litters, as well as long lines of

merchandise, from Canton to the Great Wall, and over distances of

fifteen hundred miles;—in many parts so crowded as to impede one

another, and even in the mountain-passes so numerous as to leave no

traveller out of sight of others before or behind. In what other country

of the world are such phenomena to be met with? And though it were vain

to enter upon the tempting field for speculation which these few

facts—and they could be multiplied indefinitely—present to us; yet we

need have no hesitation to predict a striking future for the Chinese

race, and one which will benefit the world at large, perhaps not less

than themselves.

RELEASE.

I.

Away!—No more, the sport of scorn,

My vassal love shall serve the Past.

The bonded athlete, blind and shorn,

Hath pull’d the darkness down at last!

II.

The gilded wire he once would spurn

The bird shall seek; the slave, once free,

To keep the bonds he burst shall turn;

Ere I return, weak heart, to thee.

III.

I gave thee up my life in thrall.

God wot, it was no silken thread!

Thy pride would make the gyves to gall;

And it has made them break instead.

IV.

Thy smiles might make me smile again:

Thy frowns in me no frown can move:

Thine art is less than my disdain:

Thy scorn is weak, as was my love.

V.

Out of the long lethargic trance

Of tears I wake with sudden strength.

My heart is cold beneath thy glance:

And pain hath grown to power at length.

VI.

The suns _must_ shine: the months _will_ bring

Fresh flowers. New heat my fancy warms.

Young hopes cry out, like birds that sing

Against the wake of thunderstorms.

VII.

A light through tears! new forms, new powers

Arise: new life my spirit fills:

As down dark skirts of drifting showers

The wild light reels among the hills.

VIII.

Where leaves are sear new buds may start:

Spring flowers may blow from winter frost:

But never to the selfish heart

Returns the empire pride hath lost.

IX.

There’s but a moment ’twixt the Past

And all the Future. Now I see

That mystic moment’s o’er at last;

And I am far away from thee.

TREVOR.

TOO LATE.

I.

And we have met, O love, at last!

Thy cheek is wan with wild regret;

The bloom of life is half-way past;

But we have met!—yes, we have met!

II.

My heart was wak’d beneath thy kiss

From dreams which seem to haunt it yet:

But I am I—thou, thou—and this

Is waking truth—and we have met!

III.

Ah, though ’tis late, there may remain

Before the grave—oh yet, even yet—

Some quiet hours; and, free from pain,

Some happy days, now we have met.

IV.

Thine arms! thine arms!—one long embrace!

Ah, what is this? thine eyes are wet—

Thy hand—it waves me from the place—

Ah fool!—O love, too late we met!

V.

Couldst thou not wait?—what hast thou done?

Another’s rights are sharply set

’Twixt thee and me. I come—mine own

Receives me not. In vain we met.

VI.

Farewell! be happy. I forgive.

Yet what remains for both? Forget

That we did ever meet; and live

As tho’ our meeting were not yet,

VII.

But later. We shall meet once more,

When eyes grown dim with care and fret

No longer weep; when life is o’er,

And earth and heaven in God are met.

TREVOR.

THE PROGRESS AND POLICY OF RUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA.[36]

It is one of the happiest peculiarities in the construction of the human

mind, that it acquires knowledge so gradually, that it cannot realise

the extent of that ignorance by which it was once clouded; and forms its

opinions so imperceptibly, that no precise period can be attached to

their origin. It is just a year since Prince Menschikoff visited

Constantinople upon a mission which subsequent events have proved to

have been fraught with the most portentous consequences to Europe. If it

were possible now to convey to the public any adequate notion of the

lamentable want of information which then prevailed upon all matters

connected with the Eastern Question, people would be inclined

indignantly to deny its accuracy, if they did not go so far as to

maintain stoutly that they had always penetrated into the true character

of the policy of Russia, and anticipated her schemes of aggression; and,

certainly, considering the prominence which this topic has acquired, it

is not to be wondered at if familiarity with it should lead us into so

natural an error. Nobody now doubts that the occupation of the

Principalities formed part of that system of territorial aggrandisement

which is the very essence of Russian policy, and which has not the less

been successfully at work, because its operations have hitherto been so

silently conducted as not to excite the alarm of the great powers of

Europe.

The results of that policy were always apparent, no less in the history

than on the map of Europe; and if they have only been forced upon our

attention by events which have recently occurred, it has not been

because the facts themselves were wanting which should have taught us

what to expect, and have prepared us to meet that contingency which was

inevitable; but unfortunately, even now, our inquiries and our

discoveries end here, we are content with recognising the leading

principle of Muscovite diplomacy without looking more narrowly into its

workings, and thus acquiring the very knowledge and experience best

adapted to enable us to cope successfully with the wily and ambitious

power which is now defying Europe. For it is a fair inference, that if

success has uniformly attended the aggressive schemes of Russia, nothing

else than a departure from her established policy could lead to a

different result; and therefore it is interesting to investigate the

system of frontier extension which she has hitherto pursued, so that, if

it has been altered, we may not only be able to account for so important

a change, but to show how it may be taken advantage of by the powers

opposed to her in the present struggle.

Peter the Great devised a scheme of territorial annexation, which during

his own splendid career he practised with the greatest success upon

neighbouring countries, which he bequeathed to his successors, and which

a very slight knowledge of Russian history will enable us to recognise

as the formula since adhered to by the successive occupants of the

Muscovite throne. In an able pamphlet recently published, upon the

_Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East_, the process is

thus described: “It invariably begins with disorganisation, by means of

corruption and secret agency, pushed to the extent of disorder and civil

contention. Next in order comes military occupation to restore

tranquillity; and in every instance the result has been, PROTECTION

FOLLOWED BY INCORPORATION.” This process, however, we hope to illustrate

in a more detailed account of some of the acquisitions of the last

century; but first it will be interesting to observe why the system of

Peter the Great was the only one calculated to attain the object for

which it was designed. That object was to extend the frontier of the

empire in _every_ direction, and to continue to do so to an unlimited

amount. There was no single especially-coveted province, which, once

gained, was sufficient to satisfy the ambition of the Czars. It was a

never-ending process, and one which depended for its successful working

entirely upon a strict adherence to the formula; for it is evident, that

in proportion as the frontier became extended did the difficulty of

guarding it increase, and that caution upon which the whole policy was

built became more necessary with every new outpost which was

established, in order that the jealousy of neighbouring States might not

be awakened, or the tranquillity of the newly-acquired provinces

disturbed. Where an influence so destructive to independence, and so

blighting to prosperity was at work, it could not steal over the doomed

country too imperceptibly; and, therefore, not until this latter had

become sufficiently enervated was the disguise under which it had been

acquired thrown aside, and the protecting hand of the friend was now

recognised to be the iron grasp of an insatiable giant.

Hence it is no longer a matter of surprise if we find that, from Norway

to China, the Russian frontier is composed entirely of provinces which

have been added to the empire since the accession of Peter the Great.

But with the principles of annexation which he inculcated, there were

also rules laid down for the guidance of his successors in the

administration of new territory; and the success which has attended

every scheme of aggression, only renders a strict adherence to these

maxims the more indispensable, since the empire is now encircled with a

belt of disaffected provinces five thousand miles in length, and varying

in breadth from three hundred to one thousand miles—a barrier not to be

depended upon, and formed of very combustible materials; indeed, in time

of war, a source of weakness rather than of strength, and from which

much is to be apprehended. It is easy, then, to see why war formed no

part of the policy of the Great Peter. He did not recommend coming Czars

to surround themselves with gunpowder and then to thrust in the match,

but rather by a slow process to decompose and absorb the combustible

particles—and this in many provinces has almost been effected. It is a

work of time, which requires both external and internal tranquillity,

and to engage in a general war is to undo all that has been going on

during some of the quieter years of the last century. Energies which a

long course of oppression have now almost crushed, will again develop

themselves; and when the work of retribution once begins, there will be

a heavy reckoning to be paid.