speak of the Chinese is in many things to be equally reprobated. The long intercourse with Jesuits, missionaries, and others specially sent there, with a reference to their science, judgment, and aptitude for the difficult business of communicating, not merely knowledge itself but also the desire for it, could scarcely have left the Chinese so much behind the rest of the world, in invention and practice in the higher productions, even had no progress been previously made by them. But when so early as the 15th century, we hear of such an achievement as the Turning Tower, of which we are about to give a description, who will consent to believe that above four centuries later they are the backward and ignorant people they are called? That really wonderful structure, is stated by shrewd and intelligent observers to be worthy of the visit and careful exanimation of every smith and carpenter upon the face of the earth, that, in fact, are we acquainted with of merely human construction, that can for an instant bear comparison with a tower fifteen stories high, each story twelve cubits high, and the whole edifice twenty cubits in circumference, having a total height of 180 cubits, which turns round upon a metal axis; and that with little more difficulty than if it were merely a child's toy! Assuredly, the people who even in whim could erect such a structure as this at a period of more than four centuries ago, cannot now be the incapable and unprovided race which many late accounts would represent them.

The emperor's palace at Pekin is described as being extremely rich, spacious and grand. While the ambassadors and their suite were there, it was constantly surrounded by about two thousand musicians, playing and singing anthems to the praise of the emperor, whose throne was of solid gold, ascended by a flight of nine silver steps. On the emperor ascending this rare and gorgeous throne, the chiefs of the embassy were introduced; and after a brief and very formal audience, at which they did not prostrate themselves in the Chinese fashion, but bowed in that of the Persians, they were reconducted to the apartments provided for them, where a sheep, a goose, and two fowls, with fruit, vegetables, and tea, were daily served out to every six persons!

An evil deed, whether of man or nation, rarely proves other than an evil seed. The unprovoked aggresion of the Chinese-Tartars under Kublai, was not only productive of great injury to the Chinese fleet at the time, but led to very many subsequent losses and calamities. Favourably situated as Japan was for the maintenance of a fleet, it was a power upon which such a piratical attack as that of Kublai could not be made withcut incurring serious danger of heavy reprisals. Tin-tsung, an extremely well-inclined prince, found the attacks of the Japanese so frequent and so fearfully injurious to his people, and to the imperial fleet, that his earliest care was directed to that subject. The Japanese, an essentially sea-faring people, had, according to the least exaggerated accounts, from six to seven thousand vessels of various sizes, manned with their most daring and unprincipled people, not a few of them ready for piracy and murder as a part of their proper trade. Running suddenly into the Chinese ports, the daring adventurers committed acts not merely of robbery. but of the most wanton destruction of property and life, firing whole towns and villages, and retiring with immense booty. During the eleven years. of his reign the emperor Tin-tsung was so spirited and incessant in his opposition to these daring rovers, that he would probably have permanently rid his country of them, had his life not been so early terminated Suen-tsung, who succeeded the last named emperor, was but barely al lowed to ascend the throne when he was about to be dethroned by some of the grandees of the empire, among whom was his own uncle. Fortu nately for the emperor, his army was more faithful to him than the grandees; and after a most obstinate engagement between it and the force

of the insurgents, the latter were completely overthrown. With a far greater lenity than would have been shown by some monarchs after being so early and deeply offended, the emperor spared the lives of the ringleaders, though, as a sheer matter of self-defence, he reduced some of them to the rank of commoners, and confiscated the estates of others.

Though the commencement of his reign was thus stormy, he was very little disturbed by revolts afterwards, to the time of his death in 1436. He was succeeded by Chin-tung, a minor; the empress-dowager being his guardian, and the real state authority being divided between her and her chief adviser, the eunuch Wan-chin. This latter personage seems to have had nobler and more spirited notions of government than were commonly displayed by the effeminate and venal court favourites. He not only took prompt and active measures for repressing the Tartars, who annoyed the Tartar-Chinese with as much impartiality as though they had been still purely Chinese people and government, but also took the field in person Both he and the youthful emperor were taken prisoners, and matters began to look very prosperously for the Tartars, who were not only more expert in the use of the newly introduced fire-arms, but also invariably used them, which upon certain solemn days the Chinese, from superstitions notions, refused to do. As a matter of course, the Tartars always sought every chance of taking them at so great a disadvantage, and made fearful havoc whenever they contrived to do so. But the bold spirit which Wanchin had infused into the councils of the imperial court, soon turned the scale. The imperial authority was assumed by King-tae, who, however. subsequently showed that he had assumed such authority in the truest spirit of a loyal subject and most honourable man. He advanced against the Tartars, and opposed them with such skill, courage, and tenacity, that he completely defeated them, compelled them to restore the young Chin tung to liberty, unransomed, and then immediately descended from a dignity that has so often been obtained by the commission of the most detestable crimes, and placed upon the throne the young sovereign whom his valour and conduct had already restored to liberty. The remainder of the reign of Chin-tung, about ten years, was comparatively peaceful and prosperous.

The early part of the 16th century produced an event of which even yet the consequences are but partially and dimly seen—the appearance of the Portuguese at China. They went there merely as adventurous mariners and keen traders; but it is quite within the pale of probability that before such another space as three hundred years, the whole vast popula tion may as a consequencee mbrace Christianity. To India the Portuguese had already made their way by the Cape of Good Hope, and had an extremely flourishing settlement. The governor of the Portuguese in India determined to send a somewhat imposing embassy to China; accordingly, Andrada and Perez, two ambassadors, sailed to Canton, their own vessels being under a convoy of eight large ships, well manned and armed. Perez and Andrada, with two vessels, were allowed to proceed up the river on their embassy. While they did so, the crew and merchants who were left with the other vessels in the Canton river, busied themselves in endeavouring to trade with the natives. As usual, wherever a turbulent body of seamen is concerned, the laws of meum and tuum were frequently set at nought, and this one-sided system of free-trading so greatly enraged the Chinese, that the little fleet was surrounded by the Chinese war junks, and only escaped capture by the opportune occurrence of a severe storm. Perez, though far up the country, and personally innocent, was seized by the Chinese as the scape-goat of his fellow countrymen's offences. He was hurried back to Canton with the utmost ignominy, loaded with irons, and put into a prison, from which he never again emerged until death set him free.

On the accession, in 1627, of Hwae-tsung, the Tartars, who, during the comparatively quiet seven years' reign of this emperor's immediate predecessor, had been preparing themselves for war, broke out fiercely and suddenly. The time was peculiarly favourable to their anticipated overthrow if the empire, which was overrun by two robbers, whose armies were not only more numerous than that of the emperor, but had already so far beaten it as to have obtained possession of some important provinces. City after city had fallen before these fierce rebels, and the imperial troops were in some places reduced to such an extremity of famine, that the bodies of executed criminals formed a portion of their disgusting food, and human flesh was, without shame or remark, exposed for sale in the open market. The imperial general was at length so pressed by the rebel troops, that being at once in despair of successful resistance, and determined not to surrender, he caused the dykes to be cut through which retained the river Hoang-ho from inundating the country in which he was encamped, and at one feel swoop he and the whole of the troops and inhabitants, in ill above two hundred thousand, were drowned. If the affairs of the empire were desperate before, the loss of this force could not fail to complete the ruin. The rebels and robbers who had alone been so formidable, now united with the wily Mantchoo Tartars, who had so well known how to "bide their time." The unfortunate emperor finding that there was no longer any hope or safety for him even in his own palace, strangled himself. The last city that endeavoured to make head against the victorious and formidable Tartars and robbers was Tae-yuen. The inhabitants, and a comparative handful of imperial troops, defended this with a stern obstinacy, which, under a different state of things in the empire at large, would have been very likely to save it; the Tartars were repulsed again and again, until the very numbers of their slain enabled them to fill up the ditches and mount. Instead of admiring the gallantry of their conquered opponents, and treating them with mercy, the Tartars savagely put the inhabitants to the sword, and then gave the devoted city to the flames.

Woo San-quei, an able politician as well as a brave general, did not, even now that the emperor was slain, and the most precious parts of the empire in the hands of the Tartars or rebels, despair of retrieving affairs. By a lavish distribution of rich presents he engaged the Mantchoo leaders to abandon the cause of the rebels, and to join with him against their chief. Woo San-quei's policy succeeded in procuring him the alliance of the Mantchoo Tartars; and, aided by them, he vanquished their former allies, the rebels, after a series of achievements on both sides, that equal anything recounted in the wars of the most distinguished generals of ancient times. But a new proof was now exhibited of the danger of purchased allies, who, like the elephants used in Indian warfare, are liable to become as formidable to their friends as to their foes. The Tartars having put down the rebels, took possession of Pekin (or Cambulu), which they expressed their determination to "protect," a word to which armed protectors attach a meaning very different from that assigned to it by the protected. They proclaimed Shun-che, a son of their own monarch, emperor of the northern provinces of China, the seat of his government being Pekin, while the princes and mandarins of the southern provinces proclaimed Choo-yew the seat of whose government was at Nankin.

CHAPTER IV.

There being a northern and southern empire, and the thrones being respectively filled by a Tartar and a Chinese, it might easily have been forseen that war and bloodshed would once more vex the unhappy people

of both empires; and the opposite natures of the two emperors, far from decreasing, increased this probability. The emperor of the south was un worthy of his high station, and ill-calculated for its peculiar exigencies His indolence and gross sensuality, added, no doubt, to the tyrannies of the subordinates to whom he committed the cares of state, while he abandoned himself to his indulgences, caused a spirit of revolt to show itself, which the northern emperor was not slow to avail himself of. Marching rapidly upon the southern provinces, he possessed himself of the capital. Nankin, and after a long series of successes, became master of the whole empire, with the exception of some few comparatively unimportant portions and the princes of even these may be said to have been his tributaries rather than independent rulers.

Shun-che was the first emperor of China who came into direct hostile collision with the Russians, who, in his reign made their way to the great river Amur on the borders of Tartary. The Russians seized upon Dauri, a fortified Tartar town of some strength, and in several battles obtained signal advantages. But subsequently the Chinese recovered their ground, and a treaty was entered into by which all the northern bank of the Amur, together with the sole navigation of that river, was assigned to the Chinese, and Tobolsk was fixed as the neutral trading ground of the two nations. Busily and successfully as Shun-che was engaged in war, he seems to have been by no means insensible to the importance of the arts of peace. The Portuguese and other missionaries and scholars who, in despite of almost innumerable obstacles, had by this time settled themselves in China, in considerable numbers, found at the hands of this warlike monarch a degree of friendship and patronage highly creditable to him. He not only prevented them from being subjected to any annoyance, but even appointed one of them, Adam Schaal, to the post of superintendant of mathematics, a post at that time, of some importance in Germany, and one that gave opportunity, of which Schaal in the next reign very skilfully availed himself, of obtaining the highest influence in the state.

Shun-che, though an energetic man, as is evident by his warlike achievements, and a sensible man, as we may judge both from the favour be showed to learned foreigners, and the readiness with which he accepted of their instruction in many branches of learning, was, at the same tune somewhat of a sensualist. Towards the close of his life he devoted an undue portion of his time to pleasure, and his death, which took place in 1661, is said to have occurred through excess of grief, occasioned by the death of a favourite concubine; of which, had we not so many instances on record of human inconsistency, one would have supposed it impossible for a man of his stern and martial nature to be guilty.

Kang-he, who now ascended the throne, was a minor; four principal personages of the empire forming the regency. The German, Schaal, was appointed to the important post of principal tutor. Such was the influence Schaal acquired in this position, that he was virtually for some time prime minister of China. But the abilities of Schaal and the other missionaries, though they could raise them to power and influence, could not guard them from envy. The Chinese literati, and even the regents themselves, at length became excited to anger by the very learning they had availed themselves of, and by the influence it procured for the foreigners, through Schaal; for among the many services he had rendered to the state, it is said that on one occasion he actually preserved Macao from destruction. But envy was afoot, the most absurd charges were made against the missionaries, and they were at length deprived of all employ ment, while many of them were loaded with chains and thrown into prison. Schaal, who was now far advanced in years and very infirm, sank beneath his afflictions soon after their commencement, and died at the age of seventy-nine. It is much to the credit of the young emperor that he

nad so well profited by the instructions of his foreign friends, that as soon is he attained his majority he restored them to their influence and appointments, the place of the deceased Schaal being bestowed upon the missionary Verbeist. We must, perhaps, blame rather the barbarous cruelty of his time and country, when we add, that on discovering that his four guardians and regents of the empire were the chief instigators of the dis grace and suffering that had been inflicted on the missionaries, he confirmed the horrid decree of the tribunal, which sentenced not only the offenders, but also their unfortunate families, to be cut into a thousand pieces.

We have previously alluded to the skill and courage evinced by the general Woo San-quei when the Mantchoo Tartars and the rebels caused so much misery to the empire; when the Mantchoo Tartars, after aiding him in putting down the rebels, had fairly established the Mantchoo dynasty upon the throne, the general was appointed governor of Kweichow and Yun-nan. His position in the north-west of the empire, discontent with his command, distinguished as it was, added, perhaps, to a natural restlessness and love of warfare, caused him now to levy war upon the neighbouring places. His military skill and his great resources speedily enabled him to make himself master of the southern and western provinces. His success was at once so great and so rapid, that the emperor and his court were thrown into consternation, and Verbeist, who among his numerous abilities included that of a founder of great guns, was applied to to superintend the casting of some. From some inexplicable motives he declined. To suppose a religious scruple, in the case of men so ambitious as the missionaries had shown themselves, and so pliable as they had been in far less justifiable courses on the part of the court, is difficult; and yet on no other ground can we reconcile Verbiest's refusal on this occasion with his sanity. Certain it is that he not only refused, but persisted in so doing, until significant hints showed him that his life would not be safe did he not comply with the emperor's wishes. Cannon were then cast, and the speedy consequence was, that Woo San-quei, who, probably, would in a brief space have been master of the capital and the throne, was beaten back within safe limits. Woo San-quei, after another unsuccessful endeavour at usurping the empire, died in 1679, and was succeeded in what remained of his power, by his son, who shortly after put an end to his own life.

In 1680 the Mongol Tartars assailed the emperor, but the cannon with which European skill in the great game of manslaughter had furnished him, enabled him to beat off these enemies with greater ease. He had the same success over the Elenths on the north-western frontier of the empire, successful in war by the aid of the missionaries, he was no less so in commerce: the czar, Peter the Great, would in all probability, but for their mediation, have been prevented from concluding a peace with China; and though the commercial advantages which resulted from that peace were not immediate, they were vast and certain. As a whole, the reign of this emperor may be considered by far the noblest of all spoken of in his country's annals. As a military sovereign he will bear comparison even with the daring and hardy Kublai; while, like England's Elizabeth, he had the rare merit—scarcely inferior to genius itself—of skill in discovering genius, and of steady support to ministers possessing it, regard less of court intrigue and court jealousies. Canton, in his reign, even more than it has ever been in our time, was a port open to all nations, and by commerce with all nations was China enriched; and his people had real cause for grief when he died, in the year 1722.

Yung-ching, who now ascended the throne, began his reign by an act which held ou but little hopes that he would distinguish himself by wisdom like that of his predecessor. It has been seen that in the preceding