with flocks; no country mansions, pleasure-grounds, or parks. Pagodas take the place of the tall church-spire, and water-communication, by endless streams and rivulets, supersede the use of high-roads and coaches. Forests and waste places are rarely seen. Every available part is cultivated by the hoe and the plough, for the exclusive support of man. They cannot afford to consume flesh, except in small quantities; hence the absence of pasture and graminivorous animals. Pigs, geese, ducks, and fowls are brought up on the farm-yard. Buffaloes and sheep are fed in stalls with grass cut from the sides of the hills. The energies of the agriculturist are chiefly given to the cultivation of rice, maize, cotton, and wheat. By the most careful manuring and irrigation, two crops of rice and one of vegetables are obtained from the soil every year. The success of the rice crop depends upon the usual supply of water from the tropical rains; if that is deficient, there is a failure; if absent, a famine-a famine to such multitudes! If rice fails, everything fails, and there is nothing to supply its loss. The Chinese labour to live, and with all their toil, the greater part of this immense hive can only succeed in obtaining the plainest and least expensive form of food, viz., two or three bowls of rice twice or thrice a day, with a little pork, fish, and vegetable, to give it a relish. The wellstocked rivers and streams supply the chief article of animal diet to the Chinese. Nothing comes amiss; everything that can be used for food, is so used, from whatever source drawn. Still, it is only the lowest and poorest who touch the flesh of rats and dogs. Puppies fed with milk are not despised; nor are shark fins, the sea-slug, and other water-producing animals which are repulsive to our taste. Nothing seems to be prohibited by law, or proscribed by usage. All animal life is spared by every true Buddhist; but, excepting priests, nuns, and women who have taken vows not to touch animal food, there are few strictly exclusive vegetarians in the country. We see, then, that although the area of the country is so large, and so well cultivated in every part (even up to the sides of the hills), for arable purposes only (allowing none for pasture, forest, park, or pleasure-ground), it is yet only barely sufficient to supply its population with a plain simple diet. We infer, therefore, that the estimated amount of population in that empire need not be considered exaggerated. Emigration to the West Indies, under the guarantee of the British Government, is now seen to be desirable by the Chinese officials, and a better class of labourers cannot be found. The coolies shipped by private parties for South America and other places, have usually been the very refuse of society; and no wonder we hear of their rising and killing the captain and officers, or dying

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in great numbers during the voyage to those distant places. Coolie emigration of this sort is a new species of slave trade, attended with ill consequences to all concerned, and ought to be no longer allowed.

The Chinese are characteristically skilful in making what they call a little profit' by trading. They love to acquire money, and are able to turn money to the greatest advantage. By long plodding industry and consummate skill, if not by knavery, they often succeed in making large fortunes. And it is instructive to observe the different ways in which nations and individuals expend their wealth a rich Chinaman does not purchase a fine house, or set up a handsome equipage, or desire to make great outward display; his ambition is to add to the number of his wives, children, and servants; to give an expensive repast to his guests on festival occasions; and to see his sons and his sons' wives, and his grandchildren, if not eating at the same board, at least all living with, or near him, under the paternal roof. This to a Chinaman is the highest conception of happiness. It is alike economical and respectable. He is the patriarch of the family, and is as much honoured in his way as the ancient patriarchs in Hebrew history. Chinese houses do not exceed two stories, and are comfortless and close dwelling-places. The female apartments are always distinct from the others, and besides the separation that exists at meals between the male and female members of a family, there is no such thing as meeting of the sexes at parties, public meetings, or walking together in the streets. If women are seen at theatres, or in any other public building, there is always a place set apart for their exclusive use. Young unmarried women are guarded with the greatest care. Asiatics are shocked at seeing the free and easy intercourse of the sexes in this country.

The most remarkable characteristic of the Chinese as a nation is their assumption of superiority to all other people, and their jealous isolation and exclusiveness. This assumption has been naturally fostered by their high antiquity, the enormous size of their country, and prodigious population. They have also been greatly shut out both by natural inaccessible boundaries and long distances from other nations; so that they have had little oppor tunity or disposition to learn the geographical position and influence of any kingdom besides their own. They have also a conscious superiority in everything, and justly so, to the Coreans, Loo-chooans, Cochin-Chinese, Siamese, Malays, and other surrounding or neighbouring tribes. Travellers and missionaries who visited China in the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, considered the Chinese empire to be a pattern in civilization and

the arts compared with what then existed in Europe. Frequent collisions of late with French and English governments, with whom they cannot cope, and together with internal rebellions which they cannot suppress, must certainly be very humbling to their feeling of supremacy, and go far to lessen that contempt which they have hitherto felt towards foreign powers.

Enough has been said to give our readers a general idea of the leading characteristics of the Chinese. From what has been stated it will be evident that the Chinese are by no means a dull and stupid race; their craniological developments, and our experience of their character, forbid such a conclusion. On the contrary, while not scientific or speculative in their tastes, they are a thinking, observing people, shrewd also and calculating, clever in business, and in the management of their affairs. Their works and manufactures show considerable artistic skill and handicraft. They seem most deficient in the working of iron and brass. They have a strong imitative faculty, and the higher genius of invention needs only encouragement to draw it out. Their beautiful fabrics of gauze and satins have long been the admiration of our manufacturers, and in some works of art they cannot be excelled. The Chinese mind is capable likewise of grappling with geometry and the higher mathematics; and when trained in American schools of philosophy, or in an Edinburgh school of medicine, it has not suffered by comparison either with the American or European. Their moral characteristics are those common to paganism in general, with this difference, that the Chinese as a people are quite unconcerned whether the object of worship be true or false; and while religious caste does not exist, yet the all-pervading influence of custom is so powerful as to overcome desire for investigation and change.

No Chinese will feel hurt at your pronouncing idolatry an absurdity, or a great moral evil; and the chief objection urged against giving it up, and receiving a better and purer religion is, that it does not accord with the customs of the country. Buddhism and Tainism have no hold upon their affections, and little upon the judgment. The authority of law could make an entire change, so far as the forms and objects of worship are concerned, with the greatest ease. The Chinese mind is very pliable as it regards the national conscience. It looks up to the throne for its guidance; hence a truly enlightened prince would possess almost unlimited powers to change the religious customs, and exert an influence favourable to Christianity. It is this view of the subject that invests the present rebellion with interest. But the length of this article forbids our entrance on any other topic. As we write the Anglo-French army is on their way home after the capture

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of Pekin. Time will show the result of this startling novelty in Chinese history.

We have seen in this retrospect many things in which the Chinese as a people and nation differ from any other that has ever existed. Nor is it probable that the history of the globe will ever present another people of this order. They present, as we have said before, the unique spectacle of an independent kingdom that has outlived all others; and at this moment, though suffering at present from the double calamity of both foreign and civil war, they are in a condition highly favourable to the reception of a higher civilization and of a purer religion. They are not about to pass away anything but that. There is a future for China, ancient as she may be, and a future that will be different from the past-better than the past. But our faith in this respect rests on what we can hope from Christianity, more than from all other causes. The great want in order to progress in China and India, is not a want of more knowledge, but the want of more conscience. It is not their intellectual, but their moral nature that is at fault; and to expect the latter to be greatly benefited simply by an enlarged commerce with European states, would be to expect to small purpose. The jargon just now in vogue with some shallow thinkers, about knowledge as being the sole spring of social advancement, is pronounced a lie by the entire history of half the human race, and is shown to be a fallacy more or less everywhere.

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ART. VI.—Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, Minister of Inveresk; containing Memorials of the Men and Events of his Time. Blackwood and Sons.

DR. ALEXANDER CARLYLE, minister of Inveresk, was born in 1722, and lived to 1805. During this long pilgrimage his companionships were many, and they were of a sort to make this selftold story of his life instructive, and not a little interesting. Unfortunately, in his case, as in the case of many active men, the writing of such a narrative was postponed until very late in life -so late that life did not allow of its being completed. His revelations do not reach lower than to the year 1770. He had, indeed, written some account of his experiences, under the title of Recollections, some time before; but this autobiography was not commenced before the year 1800, when the writer had just closed the seventy-eighth year of his age. The memory of age, however, dwells much in the past, and seems to be strengthened rather than weakened, by the distance of its objects. We cite the first paragraphs in the book, which show what the writer intends :

'Having observed how carelessly, and consequently how falsely, history is written, I have long resolved to note down certain facts within my own knowledge, under the title of Anecdotes and Characters of the Times, that may be subservient to a future historian, if not to embellish his page, yet to keep him within the bounds of truth and certainty.

'I have been too late in beginning this work, as on this very day I enter on the seventy-ninth year of my age; which circumstance, as it renders it not improbable that I may be stopped short in the middle of my annals, will undoubtedly make it difficult for me to recall the memory of many past transactions in my long life with that precision and clearness which such a work requires. But I will admit of no more excuses for indolence or procrastination, and endeavour (with God's blessing) to serve posterity, to the best of my ability, with such a faithful picture of times and characters as came within my view in the humble and private sphere of life, in comparison with that of many others, in which I have always acted; remembering, however, that in whatever sphere men act, the agents and instruments are still the same, viz., the faculties and passions of human nature.'

Dr. Carlyle's father was a minister of the Church of Scotland. His son prosecuted his studies in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, and in Leyden, and decided at length to give himself to his sire's vocation. We cannot say much for the motives which appear to have prompted him to this choice. His religion was always a very