THE ENGLISH

PRESBYTERIAN MESSENGER.

CHINA AND THE CHINESE.

CHINA PROPER is a compact territory. By cutting off a few projections, and filling up a few indentations, you could easily round it into an ellipse or a circle, with an area of rather more than a million square miles. Pekin, its capital, lies nearly as far north as Constantinople or Madrid; and Canton, in nearly the same latitude with Calcutta, is almost under the tropic. Consequently, it has an ardent climate; but a wonderful river-system irrigates vast districts, and the Nile is scarcely more bountiful to Egypt than is the Yang-tze-Kiang to Nankin and the Yellow River to the region which forms its rich and redundant delta.

With its vast population "the Flowery Land" would need to be fruitful. Every inch of the surface is precious, and crops are often grown on spots so aerial, that one would think none but the fowls could be farmers. Little land is wasted on ornamental parks or barren shrubberies, and space is still farther economised by numbers of families taking up their abode on the water. Their floating residences often contain in miniature everything which belongs to an establishment on shore-not forgetting the family shrine, or private chapel, and the favourite flower-garden. Through the bounty of the climate two crops are usually raised in one year, so that a second harvest contributes to the subsistence of the people, an amount equivalent to what could be gained for so much additional area. The hills are dotted over with the tea-plant and cassia; the level ground around Shanghae is chiefly devoted to the far-famed Nanking cotton; and for the sale of the no less famous silk large plantations of mulberries are required. Wherever sufficient irrigation I can be secured, the soil is sure to wave with fields of rice, the staple food of the population, whilst drier ground is reserved for wheat and barley. In some districts flocks of pheasants, golden and silver, alight on the harvest fields, and the inundated plains are enlivened by the snowy plumage of the rice-bird; but the lark, independent of copses and forests, is the only songster which maintains its residence in this crowded and utilitarian land,* whilst, with the exception of bears, tigers, and wild boars amongst the mountains, the nobler forms of quadrupeds have fled away from the face of man, the great monopolist.

The population is vast. In that south-eastern corner of Asia is condensed one-third of the human species. Nothing can be sooner said; few things are harder to realise. But if its four hundred millions were Anglo-Saxons, they are sufficiently numerous to people England twenty times over; or, if the population of Scotland were taken as the standard, that kingdom would need to be *Gutzlaff's "China Opened," vol. i., p. 38.

No. 150.-New Series.

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filled and emptied a hundred and forty times over before all the Chinese had passed through the measure. If a book is published in the English language, including the inhabitants of the Old World and the New there are probably fifty millions of persons who, if they possessed the art of reading, would be able to peruse it; but when a book is published in Chinese, it commands a range of readers eight times greater; that is to say, for one person who can read the "Paradise Lost" and the "Pilgrim's Progress" in the vernacular of Milton and Bunyan, there are eight who can read in the original the works of Mencius and Confucius. Assuming the population of London at three millions, if an attempt were made to supply every citizen with a copy of the Scriptures, and could the distributor prevail on the entire multitude to pass in single file before him, by working for ten hours a day for six days in the week, and giving away at the rate of 1,000 Bibles per hour, in the course of less than twelve months every Londoner would be supplied with the word of God; but at the same rate it would require a hundred and thirty years to supply every Chinaman. There is another and a very solemn way of viewing it: out of every ten deaths which occur on the surface of our planet, four take place in China. If the ordinary estimate is accurate, every day terminates the probation, and summons to the Divine tribunal from this single land six and thirty thousand immortal spirits.

Of Scythian or Tartar origin, and the kinsmen of our own Turkish allies, this Mongol race has inhabited China for several thousand years. No population can be more self-contained and homogeneous. Even the Manchoo conquerors, who two centuries ago overran the country and seized the sceptre, have not materially impaired the national unity. They scarcely form one per cent. of the entire inhabitants; and being only a new swarm from the original northern line, a stranger could hardly tell the difference. To our European ways of thinking no nationality can be more grotesque, nor can any style of living be a completer inversion of our own ideas and observances. "In a country where the labourer has no Sabbath, and the magistrate no sense of honour; where the roads have no vehicles, and the ships no keels; where old men fly kites [and play battle-door with their toes and heels]; where the place of honour is on the left hand, and the seat of intellect is in the stomach; where to take off your hat is an insolent gesture, and to wear white garments is to put yourself in mourning;"* where gentlemen carry fans and wear strings of beads around their necks; where a rider mounts his horse from the right side, and a general in going forth to battle puts on an embroidered petticoat; where boiled caterpillars and living crabs are gastronomic luxuries, and vegetables are dressed with castor oil; where roast beef is despised, but wild cats are sought after for the imperial table; we need not wonder that there are no hereditary nobles, and that the Emperor selects whichsoever of his sons he pleases for his own successor.† Still less should we wonder that we ourselves, with our opposite usages, should appear to these "celestials" absurd and contemptible.

But when we make an effort, and try to judge them in a fair or philosophical spirit, we shall find that they are in many respects interesting members of our great human family. Their frames are muscular. The Abbé Huc was amazed at the enormous loads which the poor tea-porters carry along the mountain passes on their weary pilgrimage to Thibet; an English officer told us that he one day saw a Chinaman go up to an able*Wingrove Cooke's (The Times correspondent) "China in 1857-58," p. 393.

+ See Sir J. F. Davis's "Chinese," chap. 7-9. A dish of little crabs all alive and crawling about the table was served up to Mr. Milne at a recherché dinner. See his "Life in China," p. 153.