ted; and yet it is precisely from a
study of these similarities and identities that the best results can be
expected.

A glance at any good dictionary of classical antiquities will at once
reveal the minute and painstaking care with which even the small details
of life in ancient Greece have been examined into and discussed. The
Chinese have done like work for themselves; and many of their
beautifully illustrated dictionaries of archaeology would compare not
unfavourably with anything we have to show.

There are also many details of modern everyday existence in China which
may fairly be quoted to show that Chinese civilisation is not, after
all, that comic condition of topsy-turvey-dom which the term usually
seems to connote.

The Chinese house may not be a facsimile of a Greek house,--far from it.
Still, we may note its position, facing south, in order to have as much
sun in winter and as little in summer as possible; its division into
men's and women's apartments; the fact that the doors are in two leaves
and open inward; the rings or handles on the doors; the portable
braziers used in the rooms in cold weather; and the shrines of the
household gods;--all of which characteristics are to be found equally in
the Greek house.

There are also points of resemblance between the lives led by Chinese
and Athenian ladies, beyond the fact that the former occupy a secluded
portion of the house. The Chinese do not admit their women to social
entertainments, and prefer, as we are told was the case with Athenian
husbands, to dine by themselves rather than expose their wives to the
gaze of their friends. If the Athenian dame "went out at all, it was to
see some religious procession, or to a funeral; and if sufficiently
advanced in years she might occasionally visit a female friend, and take
breakfast with her."

And so in China, it is religion which breaks the monotony of female
life, and collects within the temples, on the various festivals, an
array of painted faces and embroidered skirts that present, even to the
European eye, a not unpleasing spectacle.

That painting the face was universal among the women of Greece, much
after the fashion which we now see in China, has been placed beyond all
doubt, the pigments used in both cases being white lead and some kind of
vegetable red, with lampblack for the eyebrows.

In marriage, we find the Chinese aiming, like the Greeks, at equality of
rank and fortune between the contrac