lutely unable to read. For the
latter, there are professional readers and story-tellers, who may often
be seen at some convenient point in a Chinese town, delighting large
audiences of coolies with tales of love, and war, and heroism, and
self-sacrifice. These readers do not read the actual words of the book,
which no coolie would understand, but transpose the book-language into
the colloquial as they go along.

_A propos_ of novels, I should like just to mention one, a romantic
novel of war and adventure, based upon the _History of the Three
Kingdoms_, third century A.D., an epoch when China was split up under
three separate sovereigns, who fought one another very much after the
style of the Wars of the Roses in English history. This novel, a very
long one, occupies perhaps the warmest corner in the hearts of the
Chinese people. They never tire of listening to its stirring episodes,
its hair-breadth escapes, its successful ruses, and its appalling
combats.

Some twelve years ago, a friend of mine undertook to translate it into
English. After writing out a complete translation,--a gigantic task,--he
rewrote the whole from beginning to end, revising every page thoroughly.
In the spring of 1900, after ten years of toil, it was ready for the
press; three months later it had been reduced to ashes by the Boxers at
Peking.

"Sunt lacrymae rerum ..."

Chinese plays in the acting editions may be bought singly at
street-stalls for less than a cent apiece. For the library, many good
collections have been made, and published in handsome editions.

This class of literature, however, does not stand upon a high level, but
corresponds with the low social status of the actor; and it is a curious
fact--true also of novels--that many of the best efforts are anonymous.

Plays by women are also to be found; but I have never yet come across,
either on the stage or in literature, any of those remarkable dramas
which are supposed to run on month after month, even into years.

* * * * *

Division E is a very important one for students of the Chinese language.
Here we find a number of works of reference, most of which may be
characterised as indispensable, and the great majority of which are
easily procurable at the present day.

Beginning with dictionaries, we have the famous work of Hsue Shen, who
died about A.D. 120. There was at that date no such thing as a Chinese
dictionary, although the languag