utter disregard of truth pervades all ranks, and detection in the vilest falsehoods occasions no shame. Nothing like a feeling of self-respect or sense of honour exists among them: the bastinado seems to be their only rule of action. Although almost entirely free from the sin of drunkenness, they are guilty of the most unnatural sensualities, and make no secret of their disgusting alliances, boasting of the youth and beauty of their pipe-bearers, with the same freedom that a rake would boast of his mistress. One virtue, indeed, prevails universally among them, namely, filial piety; but this virtue is far from producing its usual result, of parental affection. The father may, and often does, punish his children with a severity that proves fatal; and, notwithstanding its being discountenanced by the penal code, it is to be feared that female infanticide prevails to a considerable extent. Parents, too, often inflict sexual mutilation on their male children; sometimes that they may stand a better chance of promotion at court, and sometimes that they may sell them as slaves. Many, also, sell their daughters to prostitution; and the number of prostitutes, from this and other causes, is in China immense. From a people capable of such things it would be in vain to expect either honourable or generous feelings; selfishness, in its meanest, most debasing, and cowardly forms, predominates over every other consideration. The treatment of women is, in every country, a test of the civilization of the people; and, taking this as the standard, the Chinese must rank in the lowest scale. Every man buys his wife from her parents without seeing her; and may return her, if he do not like her appearance, upon paying a certain forfeit; he may also buy as many as he thinks he can maintain; and may sell into slavery as many as he can convict of any infidelity. Women can inherit no property. In the higher ranks, they are kept in the strictest seclusion; and among the lower ranks, all the heavy labour and drudgery falls upon them: in the fields they may often be seen, with an infant on their back, dragging the plough or the harrow, while the husband indolently directs it. Such seclusion and degradation preclude all domestic society, and cut off the sources of family affection. In short, while the Chinese, at a superficial glance, display much of the power and polish of a great and civilized nation, no kingdom could be more essentially weak or more essentially debased. Their abject submission to a despotism upheld by the sordid terrors of the lash-the imprisonment and servility of their women—the mutilation, and in many cases destruction, of their children —their unnatural vices-their unconquerable ignorance of the higher departments of science and philosophy, and dogged adherence to the little they do know of the arts-the stupid and heartless formalities which encumber their social intercourse, and their monstrous disregard of truth— the hopeless imperfection of their language-their cowardice, uncleanness, and inhumanity: these, joined to their great national conceit, and contempt for, or want of sympathy with, the other inhabitants of the earth, provoke, in the most stoical, a wish, that some mighty moral or physical convulsion would break down, or dissipate, a state of society and system of government so besotted and degrading, and that the dungeon wall, which has so long enclosed so many millions of human beings from intercourse with their fellow creatures, were for ever swept away.

Religion.] All the accounts that we possess of the religious opinions and ceremonies of the Chinese previous to the time of Confucius, are full

In a case which came under Mr Barrow's observation, where a number of Chinese fell into a canal, and were drowned, no effort was made to save them, although a simple effort was all that was required.

tee.

of uncertainty, and mixed with fable. In their primitive religion they seem to have acknowledged a Supreme Being, whom they worshipped under various names, such as Tien or Kien, heaven, Shang-tien, supreme heaven, Shang-tee, supreme Lord, and Hoan Shang-tee sovereign and supreme Lord. This Supreme Being they considered as taking complete cognizance of the actions of men, and as rewarding virtue and punishing vice. We find them, however, associating with the Shangtee or Supreme Being a multitude of subordinate tutelary spirits as objects of worship, under the name of Shin or Kovey-shin. Immediately after the sacrifice offered to the Shangtee, they sacrificed also to the Shin, and to their virtuous deceased ancestors, imploring their protection and intercession with the ShangThe sovereign alone, who was considered as the high priest of the nation, had the privilege of sacrificing to the Tien, but any other might supply his place in making offerings to the Shin. In the earlier ages of the empire, when its boundaries were but small, one mountain was judged sufficient on which to perform these rites; but as its territories increased in size, four principal mountains in the extremities of the empire, and one in the centre, were appointed for this purpose, and denominated the five Yo, or mountains of sacrifice. To these sacred places the emperor repaired successively every year to offer sacrifice, to show himself to his people, and to reform abuses. These regular journeys, however, being found to be attended with numerous difficulties and inconveniences, an edifice was erected in the neighbourhood of the palace, as a stationary and universal Yo, and here the emperor offered the usual sacrifices, when it would have been inconvenient to remove from his palace. A similar edifice was erected about 1122 before Christ, and named Mingtang, or the temple of light. This led the way for similar temples to the sun and moon, and hence arose a multitude of superstitions; the wind, the rain, the thunder, and even diseases, &c. were, in like manner, personified, and worshipped as divinities, while emperors, warriors, &c. became demi-gods. The people forgot the more simple worship of the Shangtee, and embraced every new superstition with the greatest avidity.

Tao-tse.] The most ancient of the Chinese religious sects, is that of the Tao-tse, or sons of immortals, which was founded by Lao-tse, a philosopher, who was born about 600 years before Christ. His mother, it is believed, conceived in a retired place, by the united influence of heaven and earth, and after eighty years' pregnancy, at length, under the shade of a plum-tree, brought forth a son with hair perfectly white. It is said that Tao-tse, after having acquired a profound knowledge of the history and usages of his country, travelled into Tibet, where he imbibed the doctrines of the priests of Lama, and wrote a book entitled Tao-te-king, or the book of the power of Tao. According to his doctrine, Tao is the principle of heaven and earth, the cause of all that exists, a highly wise, but utterly incomprehensible Being. He who desires to be united to the Tao is the only wise man, and must for this end, be free from the influence of every passion, engage in no sublunary pursuit, keep silence, censure nothing that exists, and be kind to his fellow men. The principles of this sect are merely a modification of Boodhism.

His followers, named Tao-tse, therefore, place the supreme duty and felicity of man in a state of perfect tranquillity, recommending the suppression of all violent desires and passions, the utmost moderation in every pursuit and enjoyment, and an utter indifference with regard to the past, the present, or the future. But as this apathy, or tranquillity, which their

master inculcated, and which they laboured to attain, was necessarily disturbed by the prospect of death, they adopted a notion, which they are supposed to have derived from the idea of the soul of the Lama passing into the person of his successor, and imagined, that a liquor might be compounded from the three kingdoms of nature, which would possess the virtue of renovating the vigour of the human body, and of rendering it finally immortal. In pursuit of this beverage of immortality, they addicted themselves to the study of alchymy, which they mixed up with various magical practices, tricks of divination, and other superstitious absurdities. The hope of avoiding death drew to them a multitude of followers, especially among the more opulent classes; and several of the emperors abandoned themselves entirely to their opinions and practices. Their tenets made the most rapid progress throughout the empire; and the court was filled with the teachers of the system, who received the title of Tien-tse, or "celestial doctors," while their chief was honoured with the dignity of a grand mandarin, which his successors are said still to retain, residing in a splendid palace in the province of Kiang-see, to which multitudes of worshippers continually resort. These draughts of immortality, sought after with so much avidity, were not unfrequently rendered instrumental in cutting off the sovereigns and grandees of the empire, by administering a poisonous dose in their place; and even in their most genuine state, they are supposed to have, in many instances, brought on a premature decease. This beverage of life, which is still held in great request, especially among the higher classes of the Chinese, is understood to be a compound of opium and other stimulating drugs, which excites the system and exhilarates the spirits for a moment; but, by the frequent repetition of the dose, which the langour by which it is succeeded renders necessary, the constitution is at length exhausted, and the period of life is thus abbreviated, rather than prolonged, by this pernicious superstition; nevertheless the sect of the Tao-tse continued to increase in power and numbers, under the protection of princes, the countenance of the great, and the credulity of the people; and has preserved its extensive influence even to this day, in spite even of all the attempts of the celebrated Confucius to introduce more enlightened doctrines.

Confucius.] Confucius or Kong-foo-tse' is regarded by the Chinese as

CONFUCIUS is the name by which the great Chinese philosopher is known in Europe; and although his life, as recorded by his countrymen, is in all likelihood little better than a romance, it may be proper to notice its prominent traits. It appears that he was born at Chang Ping about the year B. C. 550. He lost his father when he was three years old, and was committed to the care of his grandfather, whose grave and serious deportment, we are told, he endeavoured to imitate in all things! It is recorded to his honour, that he took no delight in the amusements and games of childhood— a circumstance which we should rather consider as a bad symptom of the vigour of his intellectual or physical faculties. He married at the age of nineteen, and by his wife had one son, whose reputed descendants form a sort of nobility in China, and are exempted from taxes. Confucius soon divorced his wife, for no other reason than that he might attend the better to his studies, and put in practice the grand scheme which he had conceived for the reformation of philosophy. The reputation acquired by his learning and virtues procured for him many eminent situations in the magistracy, al of which he discharged with honour to himself and benefit to his country. His disciples were numerous, and the following was his order of instruction: 1. The study of the moral virtues; 2. That of the arts of reasoning and eloquence; 3. The study of th rules of government, and the duties of the magistracy; and 4. The delivery of discourses on moral subjects. His great exertions at length injured his health, and he fell into a lethargy from which he did not recover, but died in the 73d year of his age. Of his works some notice will be given under the head Language and Literature. Without entering into any account of the philosophy of this celebrated man, it is evident that he must have made some powerful appeals to some of the best principles of human nature, or he neither could have acquired or retained so strong a hold on the affection and admiration of so many millions of men.

the chief of their wise men, and as the author of their whole civil constitution. He endeavoured to restore the ancient system, and to improve the conduct of his countrymen, by exhorting them to obey the commands of heaven, to love their neighbours, and to restrain their passions. Some of his philosophical principles are, that out of nothing there cannot any thing be produced; that material bodies must have existed from all eternity; that the cause or principle of things must have had a co-existence with the things themselves; that this cause, therefore, must also be eternal, infinite, and indestructible; and that the central point of influence, from which this cause chiefly acts, is the blue firmament (tien), whence its emanations are spread over the universe; but neither he nor his disciples ascribe to the Deity any personal existence, or represent the First Cause under any distinct image; while the sun, moon, stars, and elements, are considered also as composing the firmament, or Teen, as the immediate agents of the Deity, and as the productive powers in creation. The universe, in short, according to this philosopher, is one animated system, made up of one material substance, and of one spiritual being, of which every living thing is an emanation, and to which, when separated by death from its particular material part, every living thing again returns; hence the term death is never used by his followers, but they say of a person, at his decease, that he has returned to his family. Thus he taught, that the human body is composed of two principles, the one light, invisible, and ascending, the other gross, palpable, and descending; that the separation of these two principles causes the death of human beings; and that, at this period, the light and spiritual part ascends into the air, while the gross and corporeal matter sinks into the earth. With these tenets was naturally connected a belief of good and evil genii, and of tutelary spirits presiding over families, towns, mountains, and other places; and while the system of Confucius was little better than atheism in the mind of the philosopher, it became a source of gross idolatry among the people, who could not comprehend the more refined notions, but, needing some palpable object upon which to fix their attention, represented the tutelary spirits by images, and worshipped them by sacrifices. Confucius himself was much addicted to a species of divination or fortunetelling, and says expressly in one of his works, that the wise man ought to know future events before they happen, and that this may be done by means of lots. His tenets, in short, instead of overcoming the old errors, gave rise to new superstitions; and the chief difference between the proper followers of Confucius and those of Lao-tse, is this, that the former inculcate the duty of living among men, and endeavouring to improve them, and the latter avoid every kind of society and occupation, and lead a frugal retired life, as their only felicity.

Fo.] During the reign of the emperor Ming-tee, of the Han dynasty, A.D. 63-81, a new superstition was introduced into China, whose influence is perhaps still more extensive and pernicious in that country, than any of those by which it was preceded. One of the Tao-tse doctors had promised to a brother of the emperor's, that he would open to him a communication with the spirits; and this superstitious prince having heard of a spirit in Tien-tso, or Hindostan, named Fo, or Foe, prevailed upon the emperor, by his importunities, to send an embassy for this foreign divinity. When the officer, who was entrusted with this mission, arrived at the place of his destination, he found only two Buddhists, or priests of Fo, whom he carried to China, with some of their canonical books, and several images of the idol painted on linen. The followers of Fo describe him as the son

of a prince of one of the kingdoms of India, near the line; and affirm, that as soon as he was born he stood upright, walked seven steps without assistance, and, pointing to the heavens with one hand, and to the earth with the other, cried aloud, " In the heavens and the earth there is no one but myself who deserves to be honoured." At the age of seventeen, he married three wives, by one of whom he had a son, named by the Chinese Mo-heoolo; but at the age of nineteen, he abandoned his house and family, with all the cares of life, and committed himself to the care of four philosophers, with whom he retired to a vast desert. Being filled with the divinity at the age of thirty, he was metamorphosed into the Fo, or Pagod, as the Indians term it, and immediately thought of establishing his doctrines by miracles, which attracted numerous disciples, and spread his fame over every part of India. When he had attained his seventy-ninth year, and perceived from his infirmities that his borrowed divinity could not exempt him from mortality, he is said to have called his disciples together, and to have declared to them, that hitherto he had spoken to them by figurative expressions, but that now he would discover his real sentiments, and unveil the whole mystery of his wisdom, namely, that there is no other principle of things but a vacuum, or nothing: that from this nothing all things at first sprung; that to nothing they shall again return; and that thus ends all our hopes and fears at once. After his decease, a multitude of fables were propagated concerning him by his followers, such as, that he was still alive, and had been born 8000 times, appearing successively under the figure of an ape, a lion, a dragon, an elephant, &c. His last words excited much dissension among his disciples, some of them resolving to adhere to his original tenets, others adopting his concluding atheistical view of things, and a third class attempting to reconcile both systems together, by making a distinction between the external and internal doctrine. The internal doctrine, to which the disciples of the idol are exhorted to aspire, is a system of the most absurd atheism; of which some of the principal tenets are, that nothing is the beginning and the end of all things; that all beings are the same, differing only in figure and qualities; that the supreme happiness of man consists in acquiring a resemblance to this principle of nothing, in accustoming himself to do nothing, to will nothing, to feel nothing, to desire nothing; that the sum of virtue and happiness is to be found in indolence and immobility, in the cessation of bodily motion, the suspension of all mental faculties, the obliteration of all feelings and desires; that when men have attained this divine insensibility, they have nothing to do with virtue or vice, rewards or punishments, providence or immortality, no changes, transmigrations, or futurities to fear, but have ceased to exist, and become perfectly like the god Fo. This state of annihilation is completely identical with the Nerawana of the Ceylonese Boodhists, with the Nigban of the Burman Boodhists, and the Neereupan of the Siamese Boodhists, and those of Laos. The external doctrine has the greatest number of followers. It teaches a great distinction between good and evil, and a state of rewards for the good, and of punishment for the wicked after death, in places suited to the spirits of each. It acknowledges the transmigration of the soul through different bodies, till it is at length completely purified and prepared for annihilation, which, with the Boodhists, is the perfection of bliss. It affirms, that the god Fo came upon this earth to expiate men's sins, and to secure them a happy regeneration in the life to Its practical injunctions are simply these: To pray to the god Fo, aud to provide his priests with temples and other necessaries, that by their

come.