in
the West, and may vie nearly with the highest of our own country.'

Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his library; and my eyes
followed his glorious figure as he passed through the doorway,
traversing the _gallery of the peacocks_, so called because fifteen of
those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre of the ceiling,
painted so naturally as to deceive the beholder, each carrying in his
beak a different flower, the most beautiful in China, and bending his
neck in such a manner as to present it to the passer below. Traversing
this gallery, his majesty with his own hand drew aside the curtain of
the library door. His majesty then entered; and, after some delay, he
appeared with two long scrolls, and shook them gently over the
fish-pond, in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there were so many
splashes and plunges that I was aware of the gratification the fishes
had received from the grubs in them, and the disappointment in the
atoms of dust. His majesty, with his own right hand, drew the two
scrolls trailing on the marble pavement, and pointing to them with his
left, said:

'Here they are; Nhu-Tong: Pa-Kong. Suppose they had died where the
sorcerer's men held firm footing, would the priests have refused them
burial?'

I bowed my head at the question; for a single tinge of red, whether
arising from such ultra-bestial cruelty in those who have the
impudence to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether from abhorrent
shame at the corroding disease of intractable superstition, hereditary
in the European nations for fifteen centuries, a tinge of red came
over the countenance of the emperor. When I raised up again my
forehead, after such time as I thought would have removed all traces
of it, still fixing my eyes on the ground, I answered:

'O Emperor! the most zealous would have done worse. They would have
prepared these great men for burial, and then have left them
unburied.'

_Emperor._ So! so! they would have embalmed them, in their reverence
for meditation and genius, although their religion prohibits the
ceremony of interring them.

_Tsing-Ti._ Alas, sire, my meaning is far different. They would have
dislocated their limbs with pulleys, broken them with hammers, and
then have burnt the flesh off the bones. This is called an _act of
faith_.

_Emperor._ _Faith_, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti, thou speakest bad
Chinese: thy native tongue is strangely occidentalized.

_Tsing-Ti._ So they call