ds of observation."
(_China Review_, xiv., 206.)

Whatever the relative frequency of infanticide in China and Europe may
be, it cannot, I think, admit of question that the crime of infanticide
is less common among the barbarian Chinese than is the crime of
foeticide among the highly civilised races of Europe and America.

There are several temples in Tongchuan, and two beyond the walls which
are of more than ordinary interest. There is a Temple to the Goddess of
Mercy, where deep reverence is shown to the images of the Trinity of
Sisters. They are seated close into the wall, the nimbus of glory which
plays round their impassive features being represented by a golden
aureola painted on the wall. The Goddess of Mercy is called by the
Chinese "_Sheng-mu_," or Holy Mother, and it is this name which has been
adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as the Chinese name of the Virgin
Mary.

There is a fine City Temple which controls the spirits of the dead of
the city as the yamens of the magistrates control the living of the
city. The Prefect and the City Magistrate are here shown in their
celestial abodes administering justice--or its Chinese equivalent--to
the spirits who, when living, were under their jurisdiction on earth.
They hold the same position in Heaven and have the same authority as
they had on earth; and may, as spirits, be bribed to deal gently with
the spirits of departed friends just as, when living, they were open to
offers to deal leniently with any living prisoner in whose welfare the
friends were prepared to express practical sympathy.

In the Buddhist Temple are to be seen, in the long side pavilions, the
chambers of horrors with their realistic representations of the torments
of a soul in its passage through the eight Buddhist hells. I looked on
these scenes with the calmness of an unbeliever; not so a poor woman to
whom the horrors were very vivid truths. She was on her knees before
the grating, sobbing piteously at a ghastly scene where a man, while
still alive, was being cast by monsters from a hill-top on to red-hot
spikes, there to be torn in pieces by serpents. This was the torture her
dead husband was now enduring; it was this stage he had reached in his
onward passage through hell--the priest had told her so, and only money
paid to the priests could lighten his torment.

Beyond the south gate, amid groves of lofty pine trees, are the temple
and grounds, the pond and senior wrangler bridge, of th