not been slow to profit by experience of
European arts. An emigrant Chinese became
acquainted with a Prussian blue manufactory,
secretly observed the process of the manufacture,
took his secret home, and China now
makes at home all the Prussian blue which
was before imported. The Chinese emigrant
is active, shrewd. In Batavia he ko-toos to
the Dutch, and lets his tail down dutifully.
In Singapore he readily assumes a freer
spirit, keeps his tail curled, and walks upright
among the Englishmen.

We are sailing now towards Shangae, no
very long way northward from Ningpo, to
the last of the five ports that we came out to
visit. It is not necessary to return to the
Yellow Sea, for all this part of China is so
freely intersected with canals that we may sail
to Shangae among farms and rice-grounds.
While among the farmers, we may call to
mind that the great lord of the Chinese
manor is the Emperor, to whom this ground
immediately belongs, and who receives as
rent for it a tenth of all the produce. A
large part of this tenth is paid in kind. The
Emperor is the great father also; his whole
care of his enormous family distinctly assumes
the paternal form, and embodies a good deal
of the maxim, that to spare the rod will spoil
the child. To govern is expressed in Chinese
by the symbols of bamboo and strike; and
the bamboo does, in the way of striking, a
vast deal of business. The central legislation
is as a rule beneficent, and based upon
an earnest desire to do good ; for the father
is answerable for the welfare of his children.
National calamities have, at all times, been
ascribed by the Chinese directly to their
Emperors; who must by personal humiliation
appease the anger of the gods. So large a
household as this father has to care for
requires many stewards, mandarins and others;
all these officers of state are those sons who
have proved themselves to be the wisest, on
examination into their attainments. A grand
system of education pervades China; and,
above the first school, to which all are sent,
there is a series of four examinations, through
which every Chinese may graduate if he will
study. Not to pass the first is to be vile, and
the highest degrees qualify for all the offices
of state; but Chinese education means, after
reading and writing, and moral precepts of
Confucius, little beside a knowledge of
Chinese ancient history and literature. The
Emperor, belonging to a Tartar dynasty,
bestows an equal patronage on Tartars and
Chinese. The officers throughout the provinces
are, as a further precaution, obliged to
serve in places distant from their own
connexions, in order that no private feelings may
destroy their power to be just. They are
scantily paid, however; and, as a Chinese likes
profit with his honour, the minor officials drive
a trade in bribery, which often nullifies the
central edicts, and which very directly helped
to bring about the Opium war. The Emperor
himself is, of course, too sublime a person to
be often seen; the Son of Heaven, he robes
himself in the imperial yellow, because that
is the hue of the sun's jacket; but, once a
year, in enforcement of a main principle of
the Chinese political economy—Honour to
Agriculture—he drives the plough before a
state procession; and the grain sown in those
imperial furrows is afterwards bought up by
courtiers, at a most flattering price.

Where are we now?—we have shot out
upon a grand expanse of water, like an inland
sea. An horizon of water is before us—we
cannot see the other bank of the Yang-tse-Kiang,
the "child of the ocean," the great
river of China ; the greatest river in the old
world, and surpassed only by two on the
whole globe. Here, eighty miles above the
sea, it is eight miles in breadth, and sixty
feet deep, flowing five miles an hour; and far
up, off the walls of Nankin, its breadth is
three thousand six hundred feet, and its
depth twenty-two fathoms, at a distance of
fifty paces from either shore. Well, this is
something like a river; from its source to its
mouth, in a straight line, the distance is one
thousand seven hundred and ninety-six miles;
and the windings nearly double its real length,
making three thousand three hundred and
thirty-six English miles; of which two thousand,
from the mouth upwards, are said to be
quite free from all obstruction. At its mouth
it is, comparatively, shallow; much of this
vast body of water is diverted from its course
and carried through the country in canals.
We are not far, now, from the great canal
which cuts across this river and the Hoang-Ho,
another grand stream farther northward, with
a course of two thousand six hundred and
thirty miles. Between the Yang-tse-Kiang
and Hoang-Ho the country is so flat that, if
we may judge by the scene from the masthead
of the Phantom, not a hillock breaks the
level waste of fertile land. In ancient times
this country was subjected to desolating floods,
which, in fact, caused the removal of the
capital. The canal system was commenced,
then, as a means of drainage, by a wise man,
who was made an emperor for his sagacity.
Now the canals serve the purposes of
commerce, and of agriculture also, since water, in
abundance, is essential for the irrigation of
the rice-fields. We are sailing up the Shangae
river, a tributary of the Yang-tse-Kiang ; this
river, at Shangae, we perceive is about as
broad as the Thames at London Bridge ; for
we are at Shangae. We sail through a water-gate
into the centre of the town, and land beside
a fleet of junks, into which heaps of rice are
being shot ; these are grain junks sent from
Pekin to receive part of the imperial tribute.

Narrow, dirty streets, low houses, brilliant
open shops, painted with red and gold. Here
is a fragrant fruit-shop, where a poor Chinese
is buying an iced slice of pine-apple for less
money than a farthing. Here is the chandler's,
gay with candles of the tallow-tree coated with