to the Emperor, who offered this sacrifice at the summer and winter solstice, probably also at the beginning of spring and autumn. All the sacrifices performed by the Emperor alone, as well as those by the princes of the empire, were offered in the open air, on an altar of earth. Temples there were none, either for the Highest Lord or for the spirits of nature. Only the spirits of ancestors, who were always regarded as still belonging to the family, had their special halls or temples; seven in the Imperial family, five among the princes of the empire, three among the nobles, one among the remaining officials. Among the simple subjects an appointed spot in the interior of the houses served for this purpose. The temples consisted of a vestibule, a principal hall, and a choir behind. They contained neither pictures nor statues, but numbers of vases and various instruments for use in the sacrifices; also mats for the sacrificers and sacrificial guests, and armchairs for the aged. Sacrifices were offered in these halls to the ancestral spirits in the first month of each of the four seasons. As in the older documents it is the Imperial ancestral worship only which is mentioned, it will be sufficient if we give a short description of these of these ceremonies, passing over the endless petty details of the ceremonial, which are given at full length in the old Fi-li. After the soothsayer had been consulted as to the choice of the day, and the animals for the sacrifice, the Emperor and those who were to assist him prepared themselves by fasting and all sorts of purifications for the festival, in which also the Empress and the secondary wives took part, appearing in an appointed dress, which was differently ordered for each sacrifice. The princes of the empire were wont to appear in great numbers as sacrificial guests, and were received on their arrival with great honours. A special value was attached to the presence of the descendants of former dynasties. The ceremonies to be observed were mostly carried out by members of the Imperial house. Besides those actually concerned in the sacrifice, all the nobles of the court and of the kingdom were present, and the strictest etiquette was observed in placing every one according to his rank and age. The princes and nobles held certain tokens of rank in their hands, which have been described as halfsceptres and sceptres. A halfsceptre consisted of a fluted, eggshaped, polished piece of nephrite, or jade, beautifully mounted and provided with a magnificent handle; it served among other purposes for pouring out the drink-offering. Two of these laid together formed a sceptre. Numerous musicians, generally blind men, stood in an appointed place, and played on bells and drums of different sizes, which hung on a highly decorated stand, as well as on various wind instruments. After innumerable bows and greetings, the ceremony began with loud-sounding music and the offering of libations, for which special wines, made of millet and rice, were used. This was to summon the ancestral spirits, and the man who recited the prayers—a special official, sacrificing at the principal entrance-greeted their arrival. After a second drinkoffering, the Emperor himself fetched in the red sacrificial bull, which was fastened securely to a stone pillar. With a knife, to the handles of which bells were attached, he first cut off some of the hair, to show that the animal was of the prescribed colour, and then killed it, and, when it had been opened, drew out the fat, which was at once burnt with scented southernwood. Several sheep and pigs (suovetaurilia) were then added to the sacrifice, and the flesh of the animals was at once prepared in various ways. In this the Empress and her companions were suitably employed, and all those who had assisted at the sacrifice had services to render. When at length the sacrificial feast was served, to which various other dishes and comfits were added, and at which the sacrificial millet and various fine sorts of millet and rice must not be wanting, every one sat down on mats to the meal. The ancestors received their portion of all dishes, as though they had been present in person. They had, however, their living substitute, for whom the great German scholar, Rückert, has invented the appropriate name of the "Todten-Knabe," the boy of the dead, as a translation of the Chinese Ichi. A boy of the Imperial house, preferably a grandson, took the place of the ancestors, received the honours due to them, and was looked upon as if inspired by them. He was dressed in the outer garment of the ancestor whose place he took, occupied his particular seat of honour, received in his place food and drink, and all the homage of the posterity, and finally announced to the sacrificing head of the family the satisfaction of the spirits with the festival, promising him prosperity and long life. The whole ceremonial was accompanied by endless bows and stoopings, kneelings and prostrations, as also dances, or dance-like movements, and these, as well as the different songs and various other parts of the ceremony, were accompanied by the music of the blind musicians. It does not ap-pear that the Emperor and those most nearly belonging to him stayed long after the ancestral sacrifice at the great sacrificial feast, at which all present, even to the lowest, took part, following each other according to rank. We are told that in another room, where the blind musicians were also in attendance, he afterwards entertained all the princes and members of his house in royal fashion, with abundance of meat and drink. The next day another sacrificial feast took place in honour of the "Todten-Knabe." Dr. Legge is right in observing, with regard to the principal festivals as described in the songs, that they bear the character of entertainments as much as of sacrifices; and, in fact, these great quarterly feasts were what we may call general family festivals-where the dead and the living came together and ate and drank; where the living paid honour to the dead, and the dead blessed the living. Though so much stress was laid in them on dignity and decorum, which was the foundation of the rather strict ceremonial, yet the festival was throughout of a cheerful, even merry character—indeed, in the whole religious teaching of the Chinese, nothing appears that is dark and alarming; and it needs no argument to prove that these sacrifices kept alive a belief in eternity, robbed death of its horrors, and encouraged childlike reverence and family love. were Besides these principal sacrifices, already mentioned, there many minor ones; some regularly recurring, some belonging to particular occasions, as when before a journey sacrifices were offered to the guardian spirits of the roads, or before a battle to the "Father of War." In these the ceremonies of the festival were more simple, although not less definitely settled. Thus the whole life of these men of old was interwoven with sacrifices and prayers, which gave to life a consecration and an elevation above common things, and furnished a most beneficial counterbalance to their too earthly and practically inclined dispositions. That, amidst the abundant honour paid to ancestors and spirits, the true consciousness of God, the worship of the Highest Lord, and prayer to Him, were in no way set aside, is thoroughly proved and shown by many songs of the Shi-King and the old Shu King. Voice. VOICE AND WHISPER. Progress is most wondrous; man is always growing wiser. Whisper. Socrates is nought before the "Noontide Advertiser." Scatter childish posies, sift all harvests to one sheaf. Whisper. Silly oracles expand into the "Sunday Unbelief." Voice. Voice. Vast circulations give the world the platform truths we speak. Whisper. Hoary ages bow before the fashions of the week. Voice. Myriads now can wisdom buy-a penny every day. Whisper. Heaven records in gold the words the jackdaw tells the jay. Whisper. Immortal beings fly; we want to let their rooms, we've told them. A CHARACTER-DOCTOR; OR, HOMEOPATHY IN EDUCATION. By A Patient. YEAR by year education is left less and less to the tender mercies of amateurs. Soon they will be prohibited from practising it altogether. It is registered as a science, and as for old-fashioned home systems, mothers' maxims, and nursery traditions, they have gone their way to the shelf, where they take their place with the drugs and simples of witch-doctors and herbalists. Yet, in spite of all the attention and funds we can bestow on its theory and practice, could anything be more capricious, more provoking, and disconcerting than the results? The child we so carefully trained up in the way wherein we thought he should go takes the earliest opportunity of departing from it. The son educated for the Church has no sooner come to years of discretion than he rushes into the lists as a giaour, and it is only out of regard for our grey hairs that he refrains from telling us to our face the contempt mingled with pity he feels for us and our creed. The infant musician, whom we strove to cultivate into a Beethoven or a Mendelssohn, upsets all at seventeen by preferring to go into the tea trade. Our intended attaché developes an abnormal hatred of society and flies off to keep sheep in Colorado or shoot buffaloes on the pampas. It is by no means my object here to depreciate the importance of this engine which we work thus in so blind and random a fashion. Alas! it is all powerful; I am a living proof of that (if one was wanted), a victim of education, and so far there is nothing novel in my experience to warrant my putting it down. But I have reason to believe that mine is at all events the first case that has been recorded of a certain régime having been adopted advisedly; that is, with the deliberate intent of bringing about the results it was surely calculated to produce. Again, whether the science can ever attain to the dignity of a certainty is a question I leave to others; but I will venture to say that its chances are poor so long as its practitioners act so much on preconceived and artificial theories, so little on observation and experiment, as at present. The one book that should be their vade mecum, namely, that of memory, or the consideration of the sequence of educational causes and effects as it went on in themselves, is the last they think of using as a guide. So I tell my tale, and, should a moral hang thereby, the reader may point it or not as he list. When I was nine years old my father, an officer in the army, had to go out to India and leave me behind. He was a widower, and I his only child. He felt the deepest concern at this time about my future, having quite made up his mind as to the mould he wished me to take, but entertaining the strongest misgivings as to whether I could ever be forced or enticed into it. Hitherto I had been very much neglected or "left to nature' as he expressed it; and nature had spoken out once or twice in a manner that filled him with dismay, while spasmodic endeavours on his part to nip the evil in the bud had proved lamentably abortive. To whom should he entrust so arduous a task, and one he had so much at heart? In spite of a child-like faith in the general theory of the power of education to form, or, if need be, to transform the mind, he could not shut his eyes to the frightful uncertainty prevailing everywhere-the absence of any guiding principle common to the various systems. He decided at last on confiding me to the sole charge of a private tutor, who happened also to be one of his personal friends. This gentleman had devoted years to the study of his art, was reputed clever, and was understood to have lately evolved a new system of his own, in which he most powerfully believed. And so infectious is faith, that, without revealing the principles of his method, he managed to impress others, including my parent, with a certain confidence in it. "In education," said he, "there are just one or two obvious facts, and no more, which everybody is agreed about; just as no medical sect disputes that food, air, exercise, and plenty of them, are beneficial to the constitution. Beyond this everything has been conjecture. My method is at variance with all those in vogue, and not least in its astonishing success. I shall merely ask you now to point out those tendencies in your son's character that you would like to see eradicated; the tastes you wish implanted. The rest you may leave to me." And then began the following conversation, which was reported to me at length many years afterwards by my tutor, as will appear by-and-by. My father, I should premise, belonged to the energetic "old school." He was a bluff, honest, soldierly old gentleman, all for Church and King; very like a horse with blinkers-seeing the high road in front of him, and nothing more; taking fright at innovations as such, and abusing them with all the heartiness of ignorance; ever mourning over modern "abominations," never discovering that the said "abominations" made up half the comfort of his every-day life-withal, the best fellow in the world, and very popular even with those who had least patience with his "Rule Britannia" speeches and "Roast beef of old England" ideas. 66 Well, sir," he began, "I'll be brief" but that he never was. "I am sorry to say there are several points in my son that I don't like at all, and that I fear will give you a lot of trouble. I'll out with the worst at once. You'd hardly believe it, in such a youngster; but it's only too plain to me that Tom is of a flippant, sceptical, irreverent turn of mind. Why, the questions he asks, the difficulties he makes they'd puzzle an archbishop, let alone a colonel of dragoons! And, if he begins this sort of thing at nine years old, where will he be when he gets to my age? Sir, it makes my hair stand on end to think of it. Now, I'm not a bigot, whatever I am, and I never could take account of forms and doctrines; but my son must have a religion, if it's the Buddhist, or I shall never |