demand for the loyal execution of these
treaties." Furthermore, that "whatever treaty we
may make with the actual dynasty, we shall
have to go over the same ground again to obtain
it from the Ming, should the Tartar be
conquered; particularly if we should have shown
sympathy or partiality for the fallen dynasty."
Which last, however, is scarcely likely. The
Christian doctrines, too, deformed as they are,
would be a bond of union between the Tai–
pings and ourselves, and might afford a foothold
for a truer and better development. The
fact of any new doctrine at all, no matter what,
being received by the Celestials, is a circumstance
so immensely encouraging, that we may
build almost any theory of hope we like upon
it; and it does not seem too much to believe
that a sect of bastard Christians may one day
join the body of the truer Church, and make
themselves one with the great family of civilised
nations. If this should ever be the case, we
shall have opened up China by a better means
than fire and sword. It may be that the
coincidence of these two historical actions—the
uprising of a national party in a manner christianised,
and the conquest of Pekin by a christian
Western nation—are intended to be the means
by which Chinese exclusiveness is to be overcome,
and the long isolated nation received into
the brotherhood of the human family. If there
is any political significance at all in this Ming
party—and no one who understands the question
has yet doubted the value of its ultimate
tendency—it does seem the wisest thing for us to
do to make common cause with the "rebels,"
and so serve humanity while helping forward
our own designs. Would this be the first time
in history when England's designs served the
whole human race?

Anything is better than the present rule
in China; any set of governors superior to
the Tartar, with his stolid conceit, his treachery
and love of lies, his vanity and puffed–up
arrogance, his emptiness and pretension. Tigers
at the gates of the Tartar barracks are set as
signs and symbols of the dauntless spirits
within; and the imperial guard, or "tigers"
as they are called, wear the head and eyes
of the creature painted on their yellow tunics,
also as symbolic of their nature. They cover
their heads with cats'–eared caps, to make them
yet more thoroughly like the beasts they represent,
and are altogether terrible fellows: fire–eaters,
who expect their enemies to fall down and beg
for life and mercy as soon as they come within
eyeshot, and see what awful beings they have to
deal with. Yet the Tartars are not really
cowards, however boastful and arrogant. People
who can tranquilly eat their rice while shot and
shell are flying over their heads, who can
calculate the exact range of fire and quietly hang
out their clothes to dry just within the mark
and straight in the line, who can cluster round
the feet of the soldiers in the field and pick up
their cartridge papers, and dart in and out
among the war ships between cross fires everywhere,
—a people so cool and calm and self–possessed
are not wholly despicable, though they
do boast so violently and lie so tremendously.
Lie! It is the natural life both of a Tartar
and a Chinaman: he draws it in with his
mother's milk, and he exhales it in his last sigh.
The very dead are lied to, and the ghosts
themselves deceived. For is not gold and silver
paper, in the form of ingots, strewed over the
graveyard, so that when the bad spirits come
prowling about to catch the ghosts taking an
airing, they may be attracted by all this show of
wealth, and, stopping to pick up the ingots,
may thus give time to the poor hunted ghosts
to slip back again into their graves, all snug
and quiet? When a nation sets itself to cheat
its dead we cannot wonder if it deceives the
living. The rich dead are often kept for
months, until the lucky moment arrives, or the
right place is found for burying them; and
one traveller tells us how old Howqua, the great
tea man, at a dinner party, had several parcels
of earth brought him, whence to choose the
one where he would select to lie, and how he
chose a gravelly one, and after as much matter–
of–course deliberation as an English lady would
have put into the selection of her wedding–
gown.

This is only one of the many things in which
the Celestials and the Westerns disagree. We
wear black for mourning, they white; we
reverence crowns and coronets, they boots and
buttons; we build our walls solid, they hollow;
we pull our boats, they push theirs; we have
the orchestra in front of our stage, they put
theirs behind; we feed the living, they the
dead; we have a white flag for truce, they for
war; we give our children games and our men
business, they put their children to business and
their full–grown men fly kites; we drink milk
and sugar to our clear tea, they have neither to
a cup half full of leaves; we hold one evidence
of good breeding to consist in clean nails, well
trimmed and filbert shaped, they in talons twelve
inches long with bamboo sheaths to protect
them; we pinch the waist, they the feet, of
women; we make the right hand the place of
honour, they of inferiority; we hold falsehood
to be a shame, they count it a virtue, if
successful and for a purpose. Wingrove Cooke's
masterly summary may come in here, though
every one has read it very likely more than once.
But it is so clever that no one can object to
reading it again, no matter how often before:
"In a country where the roses have no
fragrance, and the women no petticoats; where
the labourer has no Sabbath and the magistrate
no sense of honour; where the roads bear no
vehicles and the ships no keels; where old men
fly kites; where the needle points to the south,
and the sign of being puzzled is to scratch the
antipodes of the head; where the place of
honour is on the left hand, and the seat of intellect
is in the stomach; where to take off your hat
is an insolent gesture, and to wear white
garments is to put yourself in mourning—we ought
not to be astonished to find a literature without
an alphabet and a language without a grammar."