ain the
coveted specimen; the rich merchant spends his money chiefly on
dinners, dress, and theatrical entertainments, knowing and caring
little or nothing about art. His conversation is also, like that of
his humbler countrymen, confined to one topic; if he is a banker,
rates of exchange haunt him day and night; whatever he is, he lives in
daily dread of the next phase of extortion to which he will be obliged
to open an unwilling purse. How different from the literati of China
who live day by day almost from hand to mouth, eking out a scanty
subsistence by writing scrolls for door-posts, and perhaps presenting
themselves periodically at the public examinations, only to find that
their laboured essays are thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet
these last are undeniably the happier of the two. Having no wealth to
excite the rapacious envy of their rulers, they pass through life in
rapt contemplation of the sublime attributes of their Master,
forgetting even the pangs of hunger in the elucidation of some obscure
passage in the Book of Changes, and caring least of all for the idol
of their unlettered brethren, except in so far as it would enable them
to make more extensive purchases of their beloved books, and provide a
more ample supply of the "four jewels" of the scholar. Occasionally to
be seen in the streets, these literary devotees may be known by their
respectable but poverty-stricken appearance, generally by their
spectacles, and always by their stoop, acquired in many years of
incessant toil. These are the men who hate us with so deep a hate, for
we have dared to set up a rival to the lofty position so long occupied
by Confucius alone. If we came in search of trade only, they would
tolerate, because they could understand our motives, and afford to
despise; but to bring our religion with us, to oppose the precepts of
Christ to the immortal apophthegms of the Master, this is altogether
too much for the traditions in which they have been brought up.

A DINNER-PARTY

It is a lamentable fact that although China has now been open for a
considerable number of years both to trade and travellers, she is
still a sealed book to the majority of intelligent Europeans as
regards her manners and customs, and the mode of life of her people.
Were it not so, such misleading statements as those lately published
by a young gentleman in the service of H.I.M. the Emperor of China,
and professing to give an account of a Chine