to bribe his father, he orders that he be
beheaded without reprieve. "Father and son
have incurred the death-penalty, but, in truth,
our heart cannot endure the decapitation of
both at one blow. Let the father, then,
experience our mercy, and expiate his crime by
his exertions in the military colonies. This is
an act of goodness irrespective of the law.
There is a certain difference in the degrees of
guilt of the others;" so the emperor directs
that all be degraded,and some be banished. "The
father of one of the guilty has recently died;
ascertain whether he has left any other son; if
not, let him be allowed to remain till the
hundred days of mourning are ended, and his
transportation must take place after his father has
been becomingly buried." But for this special
interference, the power of the council would
have been limited to commuting the sentence of
decapitation into that of strangling. So the
emperor forestalls their decision, and he requires
that further investigation and punishment
according to law be directed against other charges
of improbity. He declares that this species of
crime does not come under the character of
ordinary offences: " The examinations for
degrees are the great institutions for the selection
of true talent. The punishment of
beheading must be awarded alike to those who
receive and those who offer bribes." He will not,
in this case, allow the ordinary distinction
between the attempt to commit and the committal
of a crime. He directs his peremptory order to
be recorded " as a law for ever more." In the
year 1859, the emperor's brother, Yih-jin, was, by
imperial decree, handed over to the Board of
Punishment, because, during the literary examination,
he had treated a censor with disrespect.

The four grades of literary rank in China
have been compared, with some show of reason,
to our B.A., M.A., LL.D., and Professors.
The lowest is the Seu-tsai (flowery talent), then
Keu-jin (elevated man), next Tsin-sze (advanced
scholar), and last, Han-lin (literary forest). No
official book exists describing the process of
public education, but everybody is acquainted
with its nature. Like the constitution of
England, it is a lex non scripta, better understood
by the people than acts of parliament or royal
proclamations. As in England certain forms
and usages, the guarantees of popular freedom,
are grafted, as it were, into our very nature, so
in China every man looks to the literary
examinations for the ratification of his fond dreamings
on behalf of his children or his kindred,
nor will disappointment upon disappointment
destroy the ever germinating seed of expectation
and excitement. Again and again the
student will return to the encounter if he can
obtain a renewal of his credentials for admission.
Every precaution is, or ought to be,
taken to keep the students in ignorance of the
subjects on which they are to be examined, and
that they do not conceal in their dresses any
books or manuscripts to aid them in reply to
questions where extempore answers are
required. To every student a large blank sheet
of paper is given; it is twenty feet in length,
thirteen inches in width, and is folded like a
fan into a breadth of about four inches and a
half. On one unruled portion he writes the
draft or brouillon of his essays; another part is
ruled with red lines, for the fair copy which is
to be delivered to the examiners. No
competitor has a chance of passing whose
handwriting is not beautiful; no amount of knowledge
or intellectual superiority would be
accepted as an excuse for slovenly or inaccurate
characters. Caligraphy is a universal
accomplishment among educated Chinese. They
adorn their houses with the autographs of
eminent men, and the various productions of
artistical scribes are very highly appreciated. The
Chinese fancy revels in accommodating the
signs of their language to shapes of flowers,
and birds, and animals, to ancient jars, tripods,
and seals, to the leaves of the bamboo, to
legendary tales, to groups of men, and pictures
of nature. Six varieties of writing are studied:
the square, the round, the official, the ornamental,
the running, the condensed. Sometimes
the characters are written with such rapidity,
the pencil not being lifted from the paper, as to
be illegible to any but the initiated; sometimes
every stroke is elaborated with all the care of a
miniature artist. They are sometimes painted
a foot long, with a free hand and a coarse
brush; at others, the finest camel-hair pencil is
used to produce characters in the minutest
perfection; and, to say the truth, no handwriting
in the world can be compared, in variety of forms
or in artistic grace and beauty, with that of the
Chinese. No present is more highly valued
than a scroll or a fan on which a person of
literary reputation has written the aphorism of a
sage, or the verse of a poet. The association
of the graphic with the poetical art is sufficient
for the establishment of the highest reputation.
We have often listened to the reproach from the
learned in China: " You are warriors, indeed,
but yours is the language of barbarians, and you
can have no poetry." In a communication
received from one of the kings of the Taeping
rebels, he asked, " Have you any poetry written
by the hand of God the father? If you have
not, I have!" One of the causes of the failure
of this great insurrection was the exclusion of
all its partisans from the competitive examinations.
Among the leaders there was not a
single man who had ever obtained a literary
distinction—a circumstance quite sufficient to
deprive them of any influence among the Chinese
people. However well grounded the complaints
against Tartar oppression, however unpopular
and corrupt the administration in many of its
departments, there can be no doubt the time-
sanctioned general reverence for the educational
organisation, and the participation of the people,
through that organisation, in the distribution of
the powers of government, has been the cement
—almost the only cement—which has held
together races so multitudinous, scattered over so
vast a territory, and, for the most part, so far
removed from the central and controlling power.