CHINA nearly at the northern limit of Shen-hsi, when it turns directly south, and flowing for 500 miles between that province and Shan-hsi, comes to the edge of the Great Plain, and pursues an eastward course. The Chiang on the contrary flows south from Batang, between Sze-ch'wan and Yun-nan, till it reaches the southern limit of the former province. Then it turns north, and holds its way eastward through Sze-ch ́wan and the other intervening provinces till it enters the ocean in lat. 32. The Ho does not pursue so regular a course. Its direction indeed from the edge of the plain is eastwards, but in the course of time it has ever and anon changed its channel. Chinese history opens, in the Sha King, in the 24th century B.C., with an account of one of its inundations, described in terms which have suggested to some students the Noachian deluge, and the labours on it of the Great Yü. The terrible calamities caused by it so often have procured for it the name of China's Sorrow.' So recently as 1887 it burst its southern bank near Chang Chân, and poured its mighty flood, with hideous devastation and the destruction of millions of lives, into the populous province of Ho-nan. It is now the task of the Manchu rulers of the empire to remedy this disaster, and regulate the terrible river for the future. Both the Ho and the Chiang must have a course of more than 3000 miles. These two rivers are incomparably the greatest in China, but there are many others which would elsewhere be accounted great. And among those rivers we may well account the Grand Canal, intended to connect the northern and southern parts of the empire by an easy water communication; and this it did when it was in good order, extending from Peking to Hang-châu in Cheh-chiang, a distance of more than 600 miles. The glory of making this canal is due to Kublai, the first sovereign of the Yuan dynasty, of whom Marco Polo says: 'He has caused a water communication to be made in the shape of a wide and deep channel | dug between stream and stream, between lake and lake, forming as it were a great river on i which large vessels can ply.' Steam communication all along the eastern seaboard from Canton to T'ien-tsin has very much superseded its ase, and portions of it are now in bad condition, but as a truly imperial achievement it continues to be a grand memorial of Kublai. Even Barrow wrote of it in 1806: In point of magnitude, our most extensive inland navigation in England can no more be compared to the grand trunk that interserts China than a park or garden fish-pond to the great lake of Winandermere.' After the Grand Canal a few sentences may be given to the Great Wall, another vast achieve ment of human labour, especially as in 1887 there were paragraphs in many of our newspapers representing its existence as merely a myth. Not so seful as the canal, and having failed to answer the purpose for which it was intended-to be a defence against the incursions of the northern tribes, there It still stands, while the walls of Hadrian and Antoninus in our own country have crumbled to the ground, and their course can only be indistinctly traced here and there. It was in 214 B.C. that Siah Hwang Ti determined to erect a grand barrier mi along the north of his vast empire. The wall mences at the Shan-hâi Pass (40° N. lat., 119 SE long), where it was visited by a squadron of¦ Her Majesty's vessels of war in 1839, and was seen, as Lord Jocelyn describes it,'scaling the precipices, and topping the craggy hills of the country. From this point it is carried westwards till it terminates at the Chia-yu barrier gate, the road through which mads to the Western Regions.' Its length in a straight line would be 1255 miles, but, if measured sing its sinuosities, this distance must be increased 185 to 1500. It is not built so grandly in its western portions after it has met the Ho River, nor should it be supposed that to the east of this point it is all solid masonry. It is formed by two strong retaining walls of brick, rising from granite foundations, the space between being filled up with stones and earth. The breadth of it at the base is about 25 feet, at the top 15, and the height varies from 15 to 30 feet. The surface at the top was covered with bricks, and is now overgrown with grass. What foreigners go to visit from Peking is merely a loop-wall of later formation, inclosing portions of Chih-li and Shanhsî. The lakes are very many, but not on so great a scale as the rivers. It will be sufficient to mention three-the T'ung-ting Hû, the largest, having a circumference of 220 miles, and entering into the names of the provinces Hû-pei and Hu-nan; the Po-yang Hû, in the north of Chiang-hsi, the seat of the manufactories of the best porcelain; and the T'ai Hu, partly in Chiang-sú and partly in Chehchiang, famous for its romantic scenery and numerous islets. The country is rich in the products necessary for the support and comfort of the people, and for the adornment of their civilisation. There is in it every variety of climate; but the average temperature is lower than in any other country in the same latitude. The Chinese themselves consider Kwangtung, Kwang-hsi, and Yun-nan to be less healthy than the other provinces; but foreigners using proper precautions may enjoy their life in every province. Wheat, barley, maize, millet, and other cereals are chiefly cultivated in the northern regions, and rice in the southern. The writer once had a bag of oatmeal sent to him from Kalgan, north of the loopwall mentioned above. Culinary or kitchen herbs, mushrooms, and aquatic vegetables, with ginger and a variety of other condiments, are everywhere produced and largely used. From Formosa there comes sugar, and the cane thrives also in the southern provinces. Oranges, pummeloes, lichis, pomegranates, peaches, plantains, pine-apples, mangoes, grapes, and many other fruits and nuts, are supplied in most markets. Tea is noted below. Opium has been increasingly grown of late within the country. The Chinese are emphatically an agricultural people. From time immemorial the sovereign has initiated the year, which begins with the spring, by turning over a few furrows in the sacred field; and in each province the highest authority performs a similar ceremony-to impress on the people the importance of husbandry. The hoe holds the place of our spade; the plough retains its primitive simplicity; irrigation is assiduously and skilfully employed. The tsing, or well, which was anciently in the centre of the plots of land assigned to the families which cultivated them, is still seen in the north; and where the canal or river-beds are below the level of the fields much ingenuity is displayed in raising the water to them by wheels and scoops. No other people show such a sense of the value of human ordure as manure. Nothing that comes from man or beast is allowed to be lost. All is preserved and prepared for use. This does not conduce to the cleanliness of the towns or the fragrancy of the country; but it largely increases the productiveness of the field and the garden. The horse, the ox, the sheep, the fowl, the dog, the pig; These are the six animals which men breed for food, are well-known lines; but we do not now hear of horses being eaten; and though dogs are to be seen in baskets in the markets, or cut up on the stalls, they are such as have been carefully fed. Fowls, including ducks and geese, are abundantly bred and consumed; of ducks, immense numbers are artificially hatched. Comparatively little beef is eaten, not so much because of the prevalence of Buddhism, which forbids the taking of life, as from a feeling of gratitude to the animal which renders the most important service in tilling the ground. Pork is the most used of all flesh meat, and the number of pigs is enormous. In addition to these animals, the seaboard, rivers, lakes, and ponds supply an immense quantity of excellent fish taken by the net. Angling is not much practised; but a boat with its complement of cormorants, trained to dive for the fish and bring them to their masters, is a pleasant sight. Shellfish also yield their quota to the food of the people. An idea is prevalent that the Chinese are gross feeders, but this is true only of the very poor. A first-class Chinese dinner with its twenty-seven courses may hold its own with most luxurious tables. The famed birds'-nest soup is a misnomer. Nests of the Collocalia esculenta, brought from the Indian Archipelago, are sliced into other soup, and supposed to impart to the compound an invigorating and stimulating quality, but the writer never felt that it added either to its flavour or piquancy. For beverages the use of tea has nearly superseded every other. The plant does not grow in the north, but is cultivated extensively in the western provinces and in those south of the Great Chiang. The infusion of the leaves was little, if at all, drunk in ancient times, but now its use is universal. Fa chien, Hû-pei, and Hu-nan produce most largely the black teas; the green comes chiefly from Cheh-chiang and An-hui; both kinds come from Kwan-tung and Sze-ch'wan. Next to silk, if not equally with it, tea is China's most valuable export; and by nothing does it contribute more to the comfort and well-being of the rest of the world. To the people themselves its use has been invaluable, and more than anything else has promoted the temperance that is characteristic of them. They are acquainted with distillation, and from rice and millet produce alcoholic liquors. Their literature abounds from the 12th century B.C. to the present dynasty with warnings against the injury of strong drink; but more effectual than the proclamations of authority has been the habit of drinking tea. As compared with the populations of western nations, the Chinese are sparing in the use of strong drink, and it is rare to see one of them intoxicated. They do not sit down to tea as a special meal, nor do they make it so strong as we do, or add sugar or cream to it, but they have it at hand, and offer it to visitors, all day long. The ordinary name of the plant is ch'a; but the leaf was first imported into England from Amoy in Fu-chien, where the dialectical pronunciation of the name is t'ay, which the Irishman still retains. The use of opium will be discussed in a separate article. the grass-cloth is made. The cotton-plant, though not indigenous, appears to have been introduced from Khoten (Eastern Turkestan) in the 11th century, and is now found everywhere, but is culti vated most extensively in the great basin of the Chiang. The well-known nankeen is named from Nanking, a centre for its manufacture. The Chinese cotton is inferior to the imported cloth in its finish, but is heavier and more durable. (For the flora of China, see ASIA, Vol. I. p. 491.) Of woollen fabrics the production is not large; but we meet with felt caps, rugs of camels' hair, and furs of various kinds. As the houses have no fireplaces, people keep themselves warm in cold weather by increasing the number of garments which they wear. On the whole China has more resources in itself for the comfortable support and clothing of its vast population than most other countries. For building materials the Chinese use, like our selves, timber, bricks, and stone; but in the south inexpensive houses are often made of a kind of concrete called sifted earth,' a compound of decomposed granite and lime, with the addition sometimes of a little oil, pounded in a wooden framework, which is shifted till the walls have reached their intended height. Anciently, as we learn from the Shih King, the largest structures were raised in this way. The walls, if well protected by overhanging eaves and plaster against wet, are strong and durable. Granite and limestone are found in many places, and the largest rocks are ingeniously split and wrought into building blocks. The architecture of China is defective, however, in the grandeur and grace which mark that of some other countries; the best specimens of it are seen in the marble bridges and altars of Peking, and in the Buddhistic buildings on the Hill of Longevity' and other places in the neighbourhood. No one who has seen them can ever forget the gigantic figures of animals and the statues lining the road that leads to the tombs of several of the Ming emperors, a considerable distance north from the capital. In the country, houses are seldom of more than one story. Even in the cities the public offices and large business establishments are not remarkable for their height, but for their depth, as you pass from one series of rooms to another through intervening courts. Rising conspicuous above the other buildings are the pawnbrokers' establishments, whilst the most substantial and elegantly finished structures are the guildhalls belonging to the various trades, or to the merchants congregating in them from the different provinces. The most picturesque buildings are the pavilions and pagodas. Of the former the most striking is one in what has become famous by being miscalled the 'Summer Palace' at Peking, about 14 feet square The next essential to food and drink in the and 20 high, made of pure copper. The pagodas economy of life is clothing, and for this China are Buddhistic structures, borrowed from the topes has abundant provision in its stores of silk, linen, of India, where they were built at first as deposiand cotton. It was no doubt the original home tories for the relics of Buddha and distinguished of silk. From the 23d century B.C. and earlier, Arhats. In China they have taken a peculiar form, the care of the silkworm, and the spinning and and are supposed to exercise mysterious geomantic weaving of its produce, have been the special work influences. They are the most remarkable objects of woman. As it is the duty of the sovereign to in the landscapes of the country, and there are few turn over a few furrows in the spring to stimulate cities which cannot boast of one or more, always the people to their agricultural tasks, so his con- of an uneven number of stories. The most celesort should perform an analogous ceremony with brated of them, the Porcelain Tower of Nanking, her silkworms and mulberry-trees. The tree grows is now a thing of the past, having been blown up everywhere, and in all the provinces some silk is by the iconoclastic T'ai-p'ings in 1856. It was of produced; but Kwan-tung, Sze-ch'wan, and Cheh- an octagonal form, and was intended to be of thirchiang furnish the best and the most. The manu- teen stories, rising to a height of 329 feet; but only factures of silk are not inferior or less brilliant than nine stories were completed, the building of which any that are produced in Europe, and nothing can took nineteen years (1411-30). It was built massexceed the embroidery of the Chinese. Indigenousively of brick and faced with slabs of glazed to the country also are hemp and other fibrous porcelain-green, red, yellow and white: with plants, such as the Bohmeria nivea, from which lamps hanging ou e from the project 2 f the CHINA different stories-one of the architectural wonders of the world. In the cities, and studding the country also, are many Pai-laus or Honorary Portals, which often carried the writer's thoughts to the old Temple Bar, though not of so substantial A "onstruction as it was. They are tokens of imperial favour, erected In honour of distinguished persons, and many of them signalising the virtue of widows who steadfastly refused to be married a second time. The streets of the cities, especially in the south, are not wider than so many lanes, and the streams of people hurrying through them give the stranger an idea that they are more populous than they really are though against this hasty as mption must be set the rarity of the appearance of women in them. They are paved with slabs of stone, but badly drained, and the heat and stench render a promenade through them anything bat agreeable. Most of them have high sounding names, such as 'The Street of Benevolence and Right As in the old Roman 187 the deer family. The musk-deer is greatly valued. Among the more domestic quadrupeds, the breed of horses and cattle is dwarfish, and no attempts seem to be made to improve them. The ass is a more lively animal in the north than with us, and Temple of the Goddess Ma Tsu-pu, Ning-po. (From The Middle Kingdom, by S. W. Williams, LL.D.) cities, tradesmen of the same pursuits are found very much together in the same street. The streets are wider in the northern cities, till we arrive at Peking, where the wide ways of the Manchû portion Combine with the imposing walls and their lofty towers to make the visitor think for a time that he has arrived at the grandest city of the world. When you enter the house of a well-to-do family, Vou hnd the furniture sufficient, though somewhat anty and not luxurious. The floor may be wered with matting, but not with a carpet or rugs. The tables and straight-backed chairs are of a dark, avy wood resembling ebony. A few pictures, not works of art, are hung on the walls, along with ls of fine writing, expressing moral sentiments ar historical and topographical references, while we jars and other specimens of fine porcelain are put down here and there. There may be a couch two made of bamboo and rattan, and stools of the same materials. The bamboo, that queen of the Arundinaceae, deserves especial mention. A lump of bamboos adds a graceful charm to the enery, and there seems to be no end to the uses wh the plant serves. The schoolmaster employs for his ferule, and the mandarin or magistrate his most common instrument of punishment. I writing paper is made from it. Its young shoots are used for food, and for comfits and kle Its stems, according to their size, are ployed for pencil handles, for canes, and for ན Fans, cages, baskets, and fish-creels are al constructed with it. Its roots are carved into grotesque figures, and fashioned into blocks of a lar shape to be used in divination. China ld not be China without the bamboo. The country is too thickly peopled and well tivated to harbour many wild and dangerous l, though one occasionally hears of a tiger a has ventured from the forest and been killed captured. The lion was never a denizen of tna, and is only to be seen rampant in stone front of temples. The rhinoceros, elephant, and tapur are said still to exist in the forests and wamps of Yun-nan; but the supply of elephants at Peking for the carriage of the emperor when he proceeds to the great sacrificial altars has been decrea for several reigns. Both the brown and Mad are met with, and several varieties of receives more attention. About Peking one is struck by many beautiful specimens of the mule. Princes are seen riding on mules, or drawn by them in elegant litters, while their attendants accompany them on horseback. The camel is only seen in the north. One of the first things that strikes a stranger in the capital is the troops of the shaggy animal lying or feeding about the walls, with their Mongol keepers, looking as uncouth as their charge. The birds of prey are many. Minos, crows, and magpies abound. The last are sacred birds,' which it is not safe for the traveller to shoot. The people are fond of song-birds, especially the lark, the thrush, and the canary. The song of the nightingale is familiar. The smaller birds are not so afraid of man as with us. Buddhism, with which life is sacred, has done much to secure for birds, both with old and young, immunity from molestation and death. The lovely gold and silver pheasants are well known, and also the Yuan-yang (Anas galericulata), or mandarin duck, the emblem to the Chinese of conjugal fidelity. The people are fond of flowers, and make excellent gardeners. You look in vain, however, in the gardens of the wealthy for the gay parterres which so please the eye in England. They cultivate their favourites mostly in pots; and the willowplate pattern,' with its arbours, bridges, and ponds, glowing often with the large and brilliant flowers of the nelumbium, supplies a good picture of a Chinese garden of a superior order. While the Chinese have, as we have seen, done justice to most of the natural capabilities of their country, they have greatly failed in developing its mineral resources. The skill which their lapidaries display in cutting crystal and other quartzose minerals is well known, and their work in jade, which they so highly prize, is very fine. But a mineral more valuable than any other has been comparatively neglected. The coalfields of China are enormous-more than twenty times the extent of those of Great Britain; but up to this time the majority of them can hardly be said to have been more than scratched. Immense quantities of iron ore, moreover, must have been extracted from the earth during the millenniums of its history, but a much greater amount is still untouched. Copper, lead, tin, silver, and gold are known to exist in many places, but little has been done to make the stores of them available. More attention has been directed to their mines since the government and companies began to have steamers of their own; and a scheme has been approved by the govern ment for working the gold mines in the valley of the Amoor River. The government has become conscious of its mineral wealth, and there is no calculating the resources to which it may attain. A gold and silver currency is one of the first things which it has to provide. Thus far the only currency has been the copper cash, cumbrous and often debased, varying in its relative value in every district, and the source of endless trouble to the traveller. Even foreign silver coins are treated as bullion, and taken by weight. What is called 'sycee silver' is made from them. After they Foot of Chinese Girl (aged 16 Years), in three position have been defaced and broken to pieces, they are melted and cast into ingots of different sizes called 'shoes. The comfort of the housekeeper, as well as of the traveller, is interfered with by the necessity of keeping small fine scales or steelyards to weigh every outlay and receipt. Paper money is indeed in circulation, but the banking system exists as yet only in a rudimentary condition. Another want in China is that of good roads and comfortable conveyances. The necessity for good roads first presented itself to Shih Hwang Ti (214 B.C.), who, after he had extended the empire to nearly its present limits, ordered the preparation of them seven years before he commenced the building of the Great Wall; and it has been said that there are now 20,000 roads in China; but according to the reports of travellers in the present century, the good roads among them are very few. The government couriers perform their journeys on horseback. Where communication by water is abundant the want of roads is not so much felt; but in their absence in times of scarcity it is a most difficult thing to convey supplies to starving populations, as in the famine which prevailed in Shan-hsi and other northern provinces a few years ago. It is owing doubtless to the want of roads that the wheelbarrow is so much used as the chief vehicle of communication and commerce from the Chiang northwards. The writer once had an experience of this, when, along with a companion, he was conveyed 280 miles on one of those 'cany wagons light' in about 8 days. Slow as the journey was, the fatigue was much less than if they had been jolted over the same distance in a springless mule. cart in half the time. Even at Peking roads once paved with marble slabs have been allowed to fall into such a state of dilapidation as to be full of discomfort and danger; and the route and convey ances from the capital to T'ien-tsin, its port, are disgraceful to the government. Social Habits.-The dress of the poor is very much alike in both sexes; and though it is regulated for all classes by sumptuary laws, it is varied among the wealthy by the richness of the materials and the various ornamentation. The most striking thing in the appearance of the men to a foreigner is the queue or plaited tail from the hair of the crown, all the rest of the head being shaved. This was not the old fashion of doing up the hair, but was enforced on the Chinese by the Manchûs in 1627, when they had commenced the conquest of the empire. Inscriptions on stone tablets in old temples in Japan, erected by refugees of the 17th century, mention this degrading requirement as one of the reasons why they had fled from their country. All dislike to the custom, however, has now disappeared. A foreigner is surprised in the same way by the small feet of the more respectable women. These were not enforced upon them by the Manchu conquerors, whose women allow their feet to grow to the natural size, nor was it a very Copied from a cast in Trinity College, Dublin. (Length of foot, 4 inches.) years, so as to prevent their further growth. The very poor and servants are not subjected to tha torture, but such is the force of fashion that we have known humble girls of twelve or thirteen vainly try to reduce the size of their feet, thinking thereby to make themselves more attractive. The separation of the sexes until marriage has been a feature of the social life from the earliest times. In the old feudal period, at the age seven, boys and girls of the same family did not occupy the same mat, nor eat together, and at the age of ten a girl ceased to appear outside the women's apartments. Her governess taught her the arts of pleasing speech and manners, to docile and obedient, to handle the hempen fibres to deal with the cocoons, to weave silks and form fillets, to learn all woman's work, how to furnish garments, to watch the sacrifices, to supply the liquors and sauces, to fill the stands and dishes with pickles and brine, and to assist in setting forth the appurtenances for the ceremonies. At fifteen she assumed the hairpin (as a token tha: she had arrived at woman's estate), at twenty she was married, or if there were occasion for the delay, at twenty-three.' We read nothing of any lite rary training for the daughters then, nor is there any now, though Chinese history is not withon instances of learned women and distinguished authoresses. In the important event of marrin the parents exercise a supreme control; and this has given rise to the class of match-makers or betweens, who are consulted by the parents, make inquiries, and by an examination of the horoscopes of the parties and other methods of their professio determine the question of the mutual suitability of the match. When a marriage has been agreed | upon, it is carried through with a great variety of ceremonies, the parties most concerned being supposed never to have previously seen eac other. In the majority of cases the husband and wife thus brought together seem to tak to each other very well. Notwithstanding it defects and differences from our ideal, its resa: seems to be a fair amount of peace and happi ness. When the wife becomes a mother she is treated as a sort of divinity in the householt. There is but one proper wife (chang-ch'i) in the family, but there is no law against a man's having secondary wives or concubines; and such conner tions are common wherever the means of the family are sufficient for their support. Many of the greatest names in the nation's history are stained with this practice, and the evils of it have been and are very great. There are seven legal grounds for divorcing a wife: Disobedience to her husbands parents: not giving birth to a son; dissolute conduct; jealousy (of her husband's attentions-ie to the other inmates of his harem); talkativeness: . CHINA thieving and leprosy. These grounds, however, | may be nullified by the three considerations: If her parents be dead; if she have passed with her husband through the years of mourning for his parents; and if he have become rich from being por. In many cases the betrothment of children is made at an early age, leading often to injurious and melancholy issues. The charge of infanticide has been brought against the family life in China, the victims in the vast majority of instances being the female children. That it is stained by this crime, though not to the extent that has often been aleges, cannot be denied. It is among the very poor that the barbarity is chiefly perpetrated, and their poverty is the reason of it. From the ancestral worship which prevails among the people, the denre for male children is greater in China than perhaps in any other country. In one case the wife of a professing Christian asked the writer whether her husband might not be allowed, like any other person, to bring a concubine to the house, as children were denied to herself, and she would bring up any boy that might be born on her knees as her own child. Public opinion is certainly against the erine of infanticide; the government is to blame in that it does not address itself to punish the deed and put it down. Even the public opinion against It is not so emphatic as it ought to be. Foundling hospitals and asylums for the aged are to be found in most of the large towns, but their cleanliness and management are not satisfactory. The complexion of the Chinese inclines to yellow - as they say themselves, of the colour of the olive. The same coarse black hair and apparently obuque eyes, with high cheekbones and roundish face, belong to them all from the Great Wall to the and of Hai-nan. They are stout and muscular as compared with other eastern peoples, temperate, industrious, cheerful, and easily contented. They are addicted to gambling, and are generally held to be given also to mendacity and larceny. Many of them are so; and where is the country where there are not many such? The longer one lives among them, however, the better he likes them, and the better he thinks of them. They bury their dead in graves which are built round in the form of a horseshoe, and often with much display and at great expense. The mourning rites are tedious, and embrace a variety of sacrifices and other observances. No subject occupies so large a portion of the Classic of Ritual Observances, There is no weekly day of worship and rest like ar Sunday. At the New Year the government ces are shut for about a month. New-year's Day is the one universal holiday, and at this time are closed for several days. The whole zation seems to be dissolved in festivity and joy. The people dress in their best; the temples are wisted: gambling tables are surrounded by crowds; 1 totse of fireworks or crackers' is incessant. Tghout the year every month has its festivals, of which the most general are that of Lanterns, or, the full moon of the first month; of the Tombs,' Later on in the spring; of Dragon Boats,' in the La month; and of All Souls, in the seventh th, for the benefit of departed relatives and bingy ghosts in the world of spirits. Theatrical, representations are immensely popular. Strolling estijanies can easily be hired; with the bamboo Bad matting, sheds, often very large, can be readily erected for the exhibition. Individual actors be e me criebrated as with us, and their services are ** remynerated. Females do not appear on the Their parts are performed by boys got up The chronology of China is measured , but by sexagenaries, the first 2 4 by cer 189 cycle being made to commence with the sixtieth year of Hwang Tî in 2637 B.C. But this is merely a conventional arrangement. There were Chinese in China before Hwang Ti, and the cycle names for the years prior to 827 B.C. cannot be fully relied on. The documents of the Shû King begin with the reigns of Yao and Shun (2356-2206 B.C.); and from various intimations in that work we brought to conclude that the nation then consisted of a collection of tribes or clans of the same race, ruled by a sovereign, nominated by his predecessor, and approved by the people as the worthiest man to reign over them. are He With Yu, the successor of Shun, and the hero of Yao's deluge to which we have already made reference, there came a change in the principle of succession to the throne. As it is expressed, familied the kingdom." Then commenced the Feudal State, which lasted under three dynasties (Hsia, 2205-1767 B.C.; Shang or Yin, 1766-1123 B.C.; and Châu, 1122-255 B.C.) for a period of nearly two thousand years. The feudal system of China was very similar to that which prevailed in Europe during what we call the middle ages. At a grand durbar held by Yü after his accession there were, it is said, ten thousand princes present with their jade symbols of rank. But the feudal states were constantly being absorbed by one another. On the rise of the Shang dynasty they were only somewhat over three thousand, which had decreased to thirteen hundred when King Wa established the sovereignty of the Châu. In 403 B.C. we find only seven great states, all sooner or later claiming to be the kingdom,' and contending for the supremacy, till Ts'in (Ch'in) put down all the others, and in 221 B.C. its king assumed the title of Hwang Ti, or Emperor, and determined that there should be no more feudal principalities, and that, as there is but one sun in the sky, there should be but one ruler in the nation. From that year dates the imperial form of the Chinese government, which has thus existed for more than 2100 years. The changes of dynasty have been many, two or more sometimes ruling together, each having but a nominal supremacy over the whole nation. The greater dynasties have been those of Han (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), Tang (618-906), Sung (960-1279), Yuan (the Mongol, 1280-1367), the Ming (1368-1643), and the Ching (Manchu-Tartar, 1643 to the present date). The long and persistent existence of the Chinese nation has been owing partly to its geographical position keeping it apart from other great nations, and partly to its educational culture and training. Where the race came from at first takes us beyond the footsteps of history. The Chinese were not the earliest inhabitants of the country. They made their way from the north and west of China proper, pushing before them the older inhabitants, exterminating them or absorbing them, or leaving portions of them within their own ever-enlarging borders, as wrecks of tribes still subsisting here and there, and apparently mouldering to extinction. From the first appearance of the Chinese we find among them written characters (see the next article), and certain elements of intellectual and moral culture and religious beliefs. (The connec tion of Chinese culture with that of ancient Baby. lonia has been suggested but not proved.) The Ruler and the Sage confront us in the earliest records of the nation; the Ruler to govern the people, and the Sage or Man of Intelligence to assist and advise him, and spread abroad among them the lessons of truth and duty. It is said in a document of the 18th century B.C., Heaven gives birth to the people with such desires that without a Ruler they will fall into all disorders, and heaven again gives birth to the Man of Intelligence to |