hand. Frankly admitting that the great
improvements (more particularly the cornopeans,
sax-horns, opheclides, the sostenente, the
many-keyed flutes, the corno-musa, and other
fine inventions) are originally derived from
Germany, we may yet claim credit for our
sense and skill in adopting and manufacturing
them; and this applies to one grand instrument,
the grandest of all, wherein, we believe
it may now be said that we have attained a
superiority to all other nations. The great organ
in the gallery, by Willis, of London, may be
adduced in proof of this; while the piano-
fortes, also, of Broadwood, and of Collard, are
without superiors in any part of the world.
We have made great efforts to arrive at the
highest excellence in all the nice and intricate
mechanism of musical instruments, and with
complete success, being now upon an equality
with nearly all the finest productions of
Germany, Italy, and France.

But what has the Celestial Empire been
doing in this way during the last twenty
years, or the last fifty years, or the last five
hundred years, or the last thousand years
See the Chinese harp—the flute—the horn
—guitar, or mandoline. The only real
instruments worthy of the name as "things
capable," though not to be called "most
musical," are the gong, and the brass pan
and kettle inventions, wherewith that Dragon
who attacks the Sun (when Barbarians
suppose there is an eclipse) is scared away.
The Celestial people have "a sort of a kind
of a" flute, guitar, fiddle, bagpipe, horn,
and drum. They have no idea of sounding
boards, strings of catgut, semitones,
counterpoint, or parts in music. The very tree
of which their instruments are made, is such
a Chinese tree in the essential of always
doing the same thing, that the moment
it sheds a leaf, the autumn is sure to have
set in.

One of the indications of the progress of a
nation is "interchange," including internal
communication and trade, and external
communication and commerce, currency, and
wages. What the first and second of these
are, with respect to Europe generally, both in
extent and quality, the Great Exhibition fully
attests.

The internal communication of China is
chiefly an affair of official pigtails—a series of
Mandarins of different sizes, buttons, and
feathers, sending letters to each other of
various tints, and varying from two feet to
six feet in length; while the trade is limited
entirely to articles of home produce: the
Celestials disdaining all trade and commerce
with " outside people," except at certain
sea-ports, which are so remote from the
Emperor and his capital that their doings
are scarcely known, and are not recognised
as part and parcel of the transactions of the
empire.

The following divisions of Mr. Porter's
work—public revenue and expenditure—
consumption—and accumulation—by which last
he means the increase of national works and
buildings, of commercial and agricultural stock,
and of articles that minister to the comfort
and convenience of individuals—are well
illustrated by the numerous models of large public
edifices and works, projected, or already
existing, in the United Kingdom.

In China, there are the Great Wall, and
the Imperial Palace at Pekin, and the
pagodas with their turned-up corners and their
bells, and the temples and bridges, and the
various teapot works, with few additions,
if any, and probably none, all just as they
were centuries ago, suggesting the idea of
the same Emperor having sat upon the same
enamelled porcelain throne during the whole
time, with the same thin-arched pair of
elevated eyebrows, admiring and wondering,
with the same inanity, at the same
inanimate perfection of himself and all around
him.

To complete the contrast, it is worth while
to glance at the real Police associated with
the Great Exhibition, and the mimic police
in the Little One—to say nothing of the
sweltering robber in the tub, at the latter
place, or the other culprit in the bamboo
cage. It is worth while to compare the
workpeople in the Machinery Courts of the Great
Exhibition, with the models of the Chinese
workpeople at their various trades. It is
worth while to contemplate the Chinese Lady
with her lotus feet, two inches and a half in
length, and to consider how many other
things are crippled by conceited absolutism
and distrust. You are quite surprised, in the
Little Exhibition, to find Chinese fish gasping
like other fish, or a Chinese frog without very
oval eyes, until you recollect that neither
species are the natural-born subjects of
Reason's Glory, but that the happy privilege
is reserved for men and women.

Reader, in the comparison between the
Great and Little Exhibition, you have the
comparison between Stoppage and Progress,
between the exclusive principle and all other
principles, between the good old times and
the bad new times, between perfect Toryism
and imperfect advancement. Who can doubt
that you will be led to conclusions, unhappily
a little at a discount in this degenerate age,
and that you will mentally take suit and
service in the favored Chinese Empire, with
Reason's Glory!

Monthly Supplement to "HOUSEHOLD WORDS,"
Price 2d., Stamped 3d.

THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE
OF CURRENT EVENTS

For the last Month was published with the Magazines.

The FIRST VOLUME of the HOUSEHOLD
NARRATIVE, being a complete record of the events for the year 1860, can be had of all Booksellers.