movability from office, and other wise precautions against the menaces or seductions of power. In most of the provincial capitals there are kept Ephemerides, which go back to upwards of two centuries before our era (at which time, as we shall afterwards see, the existing records were destroyed), and which offer, says M. Pauthier, "the same exactness in regard to the observations then possible as those of our Bureau of Longitudes." In cities even of the third order, a daily register is kept of all meteorological events, as well as a separate one for the troubles, sieges, revolts, fires, and other calamities "which flesh is heir to." In fine, to quote the words of Father Amiot, one of the most laborious and most learned of the French missionaries, "The Chinese annals are preferable to the historical monuments of all other nations, because they are the most free from fables, the most ancient, the most generally received, the most abundant in facts. They are worthy of all confidence, for they have epochs fixed by astronomical observations," and every other means of insuring accuracy. And lastly, "these annals are themselves the most authentic literary work in the world, because there is not in the world one which has been worked at for the space of eighteen centuries,-which has been revised, corrected, augmented, in proportion as new discoveries were made, by so great a number of learned men, acting in concert, authorised by royalty, and provided with every possible assistance." The whole period embraced by these annals is upwards of four thousand years,an immense time for the life of an empire, during which there has been a succession of twenty-two dynasties, and consequently as many great revolutions.

The prejudices of country are often serious impediments to the right perception of the truths of history; and we are so deeply impressed with the pre-eminence of Europe in civilisation, that, like the Greeks, we are prone, in our comprehensive contempt, to characterise all extra-European nations as "barbarians." In all things relating to political government, especially, we have been taught to regard

Asia as essentially despotic, and the centralised government of China as synonymous with the most grinding oppression. But the fact is not so; and however the opinions of most writers support this notion, the facts which they publish are quite inconsistent with it. When the full light of history first breaks upon the Chinese empire, we find the form of government not hereditary, but elective. The sovereign, aided by the advice of his grandees, nominated a successor to the throne; and no humbleness of parentage or occupation was allowed to hinder the choice from falling on the person most distinguished for his wisdom and goodness. Thus the Emperor Yao rejects his own son, because "deficient in rectitude, and fond of disputing," and, after consulting with his ministers, selects Shun, "born of an obscure family," but who, under trying domestic circumstances, had comported himself with uniform excellence,—gives him his two daughters in marriage, and, after a season of probation in this elevated station, appoints him his associate and successor in the empire. Shun also, in like manner, selects Yu, a man of humble station, to be his prime minister, and afterwards raises him to the throne as a reward for his great ability and energy in draining off, by means of canals and other works, the waters of an immense inundation.

In default of those institutions which we call constitutional to limit the imperial authority in China, there exist in the canonical books of that ancient monarchy, that is to say, in the revered writings of its sages, which have had the force of laws since the earliest times,-a vast number of passages thoroughly popular in spirit and most menacing to tyrants. Thus, after the empire became hereditary,which change was effected, not in consequence of the ambition of any sovereign, but by the grandees, in order to avoid the practical inconveniences of the system of election,-we read of several monarchs being deposed on account of their crimes, sometimes with and sometimes without a change of dynasty. Such examples have received the express sanction of the sages of China; the people of old were imbued with the same spirit;

and in the "Book of Verses" we find some most patriotic invectives against the tyrant Li-wang, written before the sentence of deposition ultimately overtook him. This is as it ought to be. Disgraceful excess of power may occur under any system,-it is the deportment of the people in the circumstances which reflects credit or discredit on a country. When Nero set fire to Rome for his own amusement, his conduct was indeed odious and contemptible; but what is to be thought of the people of the Eternal City, who allowed the tyrant to put the torch to their dwellings with impunity? The tyranny of Nero was an accidental phenomenon of the imperial regime of Rome, but this instance of his subjects' servility was a type, a proof for all time, of the national degradation. All history, when read aright, shows that there is an intimate relation between the conduct of governments and that of their people; that if the latter discharge their duty, the former seldom transgress theirs; and, in fine, that there are no tyrants where there are no slaves.

Under their early monarchs the Chinese were a united people, living quietly upon the patriarchal principle of filial obedience to the sovereign. As population increased, however, and the limits of the empire extended, the more distant or more vigorous of the provincial rulers became virtually independent. As in most other countries, the feudal regime came to supplant the patriarchal; and under the three dynasties that followed the great Yu (for after him the crown became hereditary) the extent of the imperial dominions depended upon the talent of individual rulers and the fortune of war. The last monarch of each of the two first dynasties was dethroned by the people, whom their crimes or oppression had roused into rebellion-one of them perishing, like Sardanapalus, amidst the flames of his palace. In the days of Confucius who lived during the third of these dynasties (that of Chow), between five and six hundred years before our era-China was divided into a number of little kingdoms or feudal states, dependent, or which ought to have been dependent, upon a sove

reign kingdom situated in the middle of them; and hence the title Kingdom of the Middle has continued to be given to the empire down to the present day. China at this time was in great danger of being permanently split up into a number of small kingdoms, which, instead of pouring down its civilisation in one grand stream, would have scattered it into puny rills, liable to be arrested or turned aside by the least obstacle. Instead of a Mongolian giant, remaining immovable against all attack, there would have been a series of active dwarfs, more potent to harass one another than to preserve themselves. In short, there can be little doubt that had China then (or even five centuries afterwards, when again threatened with a similar calamity) separated into a number of independent states, the country would have been wholly overrun and subdued by the roving hordes of Central Asia, and, like the Empires of the West, have had its ancient civilisation submerged by a flood of barbarism.

From this danger China was saved by one of those extraordinary men whom Providence raises up at distant intervals to accomplish its designs. During the last reigns of the Chow dynasty, the Tsin state had been gradually overshadowing its neighbours; and at length, having defeated the hereditary monarch, its prince assumed the imperial title in 249 B.C. He seems to have survived his triumph only a few months, but his exploits were speedily eclipsed by those of his son, who assumed the title of Tsin-Che-Hoang-te, or "the first grand emperor of the Tsin dynasty." Inspired by the loftiest daring and ambition, he resolved to subjugate all the other states; and after astute preparation and a series of as bloody wars as ever deluged Europe, this Napoleon of China at length ruled supreme over the whole empire. But his designs were as vast as his ambition was boundless; and no sooner had he restored to his nation its grand and puissant unity, and subdued with frightful slaughter the nomade tribes of the north and south, than he resolved to give full employment to the millions of men whom the cessation of warfare had thrown

Un

idle on the country. It was with this object, not less than as a defence against the Tartars, that he set four or five millions of men (a third of the able-bodied population) to work in constructing the Great Wall, and shut up five hundred thousand soldiers in fortresses, where they were employed in works of utility. He visited all parts of the empire-caused great roads to be made through the most impassable districts-ordered a universal disarmament of the people drew up a statistical account of all the provinces-again and again went to war, each time extending the limits of the empire, and devoted large sums to the embellishment of his capital. We question if Europe, or the whole rest of the world, can show a Grand Monarque like this. Strong in the consciousness of his own genius, he contemned the precepts of antiquity which have always been so highly venerated by the Chinese; and to the remonstrances of the men of letters replied, that the old precedents were inapplicable to the new times. questionably he was right in the main, -nothing but an unflinching hand and indomitable will could then have rescued the empire from falling to pieces; but, incensed by his tyranny no less than by his innovations, the whole body of the Men of Letters ranged themselves in opposition to him. For long the Emperor temporised with them; but at length, feeling his power fairly established, and fearing lest his opponents should by-andby inoculate the people with their sentiments, he resolved to cut up their power by the roots, by commanding, under the penalty of death, that (with a few exceptions) the whole books in the empire should be burnt. The conduct of the Men of Letters, throughout this trying struggle, was in the highest degree patriotic, and several hundreds suffered death rather than acquiesce in the tyranny of the Emperor. The destruction of the books, and most of the other monuments of the past, shows the imminence of the conflict in which Che-Hoang-te found himself involved. He triumphed for the time; but it is always vain for a single man to contend with the natural predilections of a whole nation, and in sixty years afterwards the

interdict against the books was removed, and the people engaged with enthusiasm in the task of recovering their old literature, by carefully searching out all the fragments which had escaped the flames, as well as the many volumes, vases, &c., buried in tombs. The dynasty of the First Great Emperor was even shorterlived than his political system: his son was dethroned while still a youth, and his crown, contended for by his generals, at length fell to the lot of Leou-pang, who founded the celebrated dynasty of Han. In the case of this great Chinese monarch, as in the case of Alexander, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, we see how difficult it is for a great conqueror to transmit his sword-won empire to his descendants-and how expedient it may be in autocratic states, where the empire rests wholly on the shoulders of one person, that the law of primogeniture (so beneficial in its operation in constitutional states) should be dispensed with in order to secure a succession of able sovereigns.

The system of standing armies, which had been introduced by CheHoang-te, was continued by the new dynasty, asserting the supremacy of the throne, and extending its sway over the Mongolian tribes to the shores of the Caspian. As early as this dynasty, political and commercial relations existed with Western Asia; and the emperors having discovered the channel by which silks were exported, it was resolved to send an ambassador to Rome. But the pusillanimity of the Chinese general to whom this mission was intrusted, marred the whole plan; and thus the mightiest empires of the East and West existed simultaneously without becoming acquainted. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, indeed, sent an embassy to the country from which the silks came, and these envoys reached their destination, A.D. 166, but returned without having effected anything. This is not surprising; for the celebrated entrepot where the Chinese and Western merchants met, seems to have been in the narrow pass of Belurtag, in the neighbourhood of the Gibon and Yerghien; and the deserts on the frontiers of China, with their roving robber-tribes, presented almost insur

mountable obstacles to an embassy advancing from the West.

The marriage-rite is said to have been introduced among the Chinese by their first king, Fohi, and polygamy with its dangerous seductions was adopted so early as by the immediate successors of Hoang-te. The evils of polygamy, however, were aggravated by the monarchs of the Han dynasty raising eunuchs of the Court to important offices in the State. In China, as elsewhere, these men, emasculated in everything save craftiness and ambition, came to exercise a pernicious influence on the government; but, forming an association for mutual aid among themselves, they were the means of ruining many successive dynasties without themselves being displaced. This happened with the line of Han. Feudality lifted up its head again as the government became weak; the empire was sundered into three principalities; and at length the prince of one of them obtained the sovereignty, commencing the dynasty called Tsin *—A.D. 260-416; on the extinction of which China once more became divided into two kingdoms, separated by the broad stream of the Yang-tse-keang. For nearly two centuries afterwards, five families rapidly followed each other on the throne; and, the salutary rule of hereditary succession being constantly violated by the strongest, the whole history of the period is a mere record of contests and crimes. At length, in A.D. 585, the north and south were reunited in one empire; and soon after, Ly-yuen, a celebrated general and statesman, usurped the throne, and founded the martial dynasty of Tang.

Those who open their eyes in wonderment at the idea of a rebellion in China, will do well to consider this period. The whole history of the country, from A.D. 262 to 905, is one of anarchy and internal convulsions, while the empire narrowly escaped dismemberment or extinction from the countless hordes of Central Asia, who pressed upon the woe-stricken country much about the same time as they began to hurtle against the

Roman frontiers in the West. But in the midst of all this misery, when almost every man had to lay down the ploughshare and take up the sword, the money-making spirit of the people still urged on the enterprises of foreign commerce. When the wars between Persia and Rome rendered impracticable the commercial road by Samarcand and Bokhara, the Chinese merchants travelled over Tibet and the Himalaya mountains, and, dropping down the Indus or Ganges, awaited the arrival of the Red Sea fleet, which annually repaired to Guzerat. By-and-by, however, finding a sea-voyage more advantageous, they journeyed in their huge junks round the Malayan Peninsula to Ceylon, which then became the principal emporium between the East and West. Such were the commercial relations, when a monk, in the reign of Justinian (circ. 650), penetrated into China, carried away the eggs of the silkworm in a hollow cane, with the seeds of the mulberry-tree, and thus transferred the manufacture of silk to the Western world. Soon afterwards the Arabs, animated by a proselytising spirit, and fond of adventure, sent in 708 an embassy with valuable presents to China by way of Kashgar. Moreover, following in the wake of the junks, the Arabian navigators reached the Chinese seas; but little success at first attended them, and the exactions upon them became so heavy that most of the Arabs returned to their own country. spite of all obstacles, however, the trade lingered on, till their fellowMahommedans, the Mongols, seized upon China; and thenceforward it was carried on with tolerable briskness, till the arrival of the Portuguese in 1516, and of the Dutch and English about a century later, threw the commerce into more enterprising hands.

In

After five ephemeral dynasties, whose unfortunate reigns occupied the half-century following the fall of the Tangs, the celebrated Soong dynasty mounted the throne. Printing, or rather xylography, is said to have been invented about the begin

ning of the tenth century, but it does not seem to have been brought into much use until this period. Literature, which had been greatly neglected during the five or six centuries preceding, flourished again abundantly, even as the Augustan and Elizabethan ages of literature followed similar periods of convulsion in the history of Rome and England; -and the national philosophy assumed that materialistic form which it still retains. But China, which had flourished in its own might for nearly four thousand years, was now about to pass under the yoke of a foreign conqueror. The incursions of the Nomades of the Steppes had been growing more and more formidable; and at length, seeing a child on the Chinese throne, the Mongols under Kublai Khan, one of the wisest as well as most warlike princes that ever swayed an Eastern sceptre, -dashed into the empire, took the capital, and sent the young emperor a prisoner into the Shamo desert (A.D. 1276). Great patriotism was exhibited by the vanquished, great severity by the conquerors, and it is recorded that "the blood of the people flowed in sounding torrents." The institutions of the empire were maintained, and Chinese manners adopted by the Mongols-a thing unparalleled in the annals of conquest, and showing at once the excellence of those institutions, and the firm hold which they had on the affections of the people. In order to remedy the infertility of the soil in the vicinity of Peking, Kublai completed the stupendous undertaking of the Grand Canal, which had been commenced under the preceding dynasty; and under him and his successors the Arab merchants enjoyed many privileges, because holding the same creed as the Mongols. But the race of Kublai rapidly degenerated, and before they had reigned in China for a century, the people, under the ancestor of the Ming dynasty, rose in rebellion, and expelled the Mongols, just as they are now doing the Mantchoos. For nearly three centuries afterwards, the Chinese enjoyed peace under a native dynasty; toleration was proclaimed for all sects alike, and the arrival of the Portuguese introduced some knowledge

of the religion and sciences of Europe. The nation, however-like most longestablished and highly-civilised states

seems to have been gradually declining in military spirit; so that in 1643 the Mantchoo Tartars, though a mere handful compared to the myriads of China, overran the empire and seized upon the throne. In order to conceal this disparity of numbers, the conquered people were commanded to shave the thick hair, which they had been wont to wear from the earliest times (and which they are now, thanks to the Rebellion, resuming), and to betake themselves to the Tartar fashion of a long plaited tress or tail. In other respects, also,_they were compelled to adopt the Tartar habit, but so great was the aversion of the Chinese, that a general revolt broke out, and many preferred death to submission. From that time until now, the government has continued in the hands of the Mantchoos.

Our limits do not permit us to do more than trace the bare outlines of the history of China; but an adequate survey of it would amply refute the common but preposterous notion, that this most ancient of empires has undergone no changes since its first establishment. It has beheld its monarchy pass from elective to hereditary-its government from patriarchal to feudal, from feudal to imperial, finally settling into the immovable form of a centralised bureaucracy. It has beheld the unity of the empire broken again and again,-two conquests of the country, and altogether two-and-twenty dynastic changes, involving, of course, as many warlike revolutions. It has beheld its religion change from an earnest acknowledgment of the Most High to Indifferentism, and finally to Materialism. In all these respects time has done its work of change, and Chinese civilisation will never be properly understood unless these changes are borne in mind. But after all, Time, the destroyer, has been lenient in his dealings with China, and all those revolutions which she has witnessed are nothing to the stupendous overthrows and regenerations of the kingdoms of the West. What has become of the old "universal empires" of Egypt and Assyria, of