renewal of the people by example; 3. of constancy in the supreme good. He reckons as the three distinguishing qualities of a perfect prince-obedience to parents; respect to elder brothers; kindness to inferiors. In the same work, he lays down five universal rules of action; mutual justice between a king and his subjects; love between parents and children; fidelity between husbands and wives; mutual offices of kindness and affection between friends. He taught that rectitude and purity of heart were the foundations of all morality; and recommended the golden mean in the following quaint terms, as they are conveyed by the Latin of his translators,-"Avoid defect and excess, and you will apprehend the mean; the reputedly wise miss it by excess; the ignorant, by coming short of it." These doctrines were delivered by Confucius after the ancient fashion, in conversation with his disciples. He was a strenuous upholder of the doctrines and precepts handed down from the sages of an earlier day, and opposed to all innovation. His maxim was, "I believe in, and I love antiquity." The authorities to which he constantly appealed in the course of his instruction, were the odes and metrical proverbs of the ancient kings and sages, and the examples of virtue contained in the chronicles of former days. These furnished the texts, with which he enforced his teachings. He was accustomed to say, that the substance of these ancient poems, the vehicles of traditional wisdom, was contained in this one phrase; "Let the thoughts of our minds be free from all wickedness." Confucius was simple in his manners, and plain in his dress and food. Among the particulars recorded of him it is said, that, in common with many other legislators of antiquity, he ascribed great importance to music in civilizing mankind. It has been observed of the Mandarins or learned sect in China, who are followers of Confucius, that they teach nothing respecting the immortality of the soul.* It appears, however, according to some interpreters, to have been the doctrine of Confucius, that the constant habit of virtue so strengthens the soul as to endue it finally with the attribute of immortality.† Education in China has been for ages completely in the hands of the state. The doctrines of the king or ancient books, as expounded by Confucius, constitute the basis of public instruction; and the inculcation of these doctrines is entrusted to the literary class or Mandarins. There is a regular gradation of schools and colleges, from the most elementary institutions of the provincial * Davis, ch. XII. + Euvres de Fréret. Histoire. Tom. VI. p. 283. towns to the central boards of the capital, which are open in due succession to all of every class who choose to enter them. Advancement is awarded to merit alone. Every three years an examination of the different orders of the learned takes place, to ascertain their fitness for office; when only those that are proved competent are re-appointed. This learned class is replenished by merit only from all ranks in the state. Its members fill all the public offices, and execute all the functions of the government. They have the compiling of the national annals; preside at the astronomical board, which fixes the calendar and the religious ceremonies of the nation; and on the days of the full and new moon they instruct the people in morality, and make them acquainted with the laws, out of sixteen discourses, a sort of prescribed homilies, appointed to be read by authority, and founded on their ancient writings. The Emperor is regarded as the father and absolute master of the state, who executes his will through the Mandarins. The princes of the blood enjoy no official power and dignity. Nevertheless, an authority is recognised above that of the Emperor, that of the king or sacred books. This authority is embodied and expressed in the order of the Mandarins, as that of the Vedas is invested in the Brahmins. In the Mandarins therefore the real power of the empire resides. They form its aristocracy. Drafted however impartially from all ranks in the state, owing their advancement to merit alone, and subjected to periodical tests of competency, forming no exclusive caste, and enjoying no distinctions or privileges to which the humblest member of the community may not equally aspire, they connect this aristocracy of talent and knowledge, upon whose undisputed influence the tranquillity of the state depends, through endless ramifications with the great body of the people, and thus give breadth and solidity to the basis of the national civilization. Hence there are no parties, no factions; jarring and friction no where occur; but every thing proceeds with the regularity of a well-adjusted machine. The mass of the nation are intensely interested in preserving things as they are. Turbulence and innovation are hateful to the Chinese. They may wish a change of dynasty, but such an event would leave the general character of their civilization unaltered. These are the causes which have secured for ages the permanence and immobility of the Chinese institutions. The Mongols formerly, as the Mandchows now, have governed China; but under these as well as under native dynasties, the working of society and the manners of the nation have continued perfectly Chinese. The deep-rooted power of the Mandarins is proved by the inability of the most despotic princes to set it aside. The tyrant Tsin-chi-hoang struck a deadly blow at the order by commanding the destruction of their classical books; and more effectually to break the spirit of the learned, he barbarously compelled numbers of them to exchange the pen for the trowel, and assist in erecting the great wall. Yet they rose again from the stroke that would have levelled them, and in a few years we find the institutions connected with them in greater strength and vigour than ever. It was probably a feeling of the same kind which led the sagacious Kublai Khan, at a much later period, to encourage the settlement of Christians in his newly acquired empire, as a counterpoise to the power of this native aristocracy. * * * * We have reason to congratulate ourselves, that in the midst of that long lapse of ages, during which the very name of China was almost lost to the western world, and while Europe was still groaning under the weight of the feudal system, with a commerce confined to a few favoured spots, and with arts and literature only just awakening into life,-a Venetian traveller should have penetrated into this vast and flourishing empire, and been admitted without suspicion or difficulty into the very heart of its public and private life-of its manners, its institutions, and its form of government. Marco Polo visited this singular country at an eventful and interesting period; in the latter half of the thirteenth century, just after its first entire subjugation to foreign rule by the Mongol conqueror, Kublai Khan, the grandson of the celebrated Genghiz Khan. At the court of this prince he was received with marks of extraordinary favour, and was employed by him on several missions of importance in the central and southern parts of his dominions. The Venetian had thus an opportunity of surveying at leisure the form into which Chinese civilization had been gradually consolidated through the centuries that had passed since its first foundations were laid. When we consider the tenacity with which the Chinese have always adhered to their traditional usages and institutions, and that, at this day, their system of morals and policy and the whole of their public instruction are based on the doctrines of Confucius, who is universally admitted to have flourished five or six centuries before Christ,-I do not see how we can object to the conclusion, that the picture exhibited to us in the pages of Marco Polo may be regarded as a faithful exposition of the inherent principles of the ancient Chinese civilization, worked out to their natural results, and developed in their fullest expansion. He had many of the qualifications which we most desire in a traveller; and his account is just such as we should wish to read of such a people-shrewd, desultory, unstudied and circumstantial. Carried into these remote regions by the spirit of commercial enterprise, and unbiassed by any preconceived theories to warp his conclusions, he has simply recorded what he saw, and stated his impressions as they occurred to him. His narration, taken down, it is said, from his lips by the pen of a friend, has all the freshness of a direct transcript from the memory, and combines in no small degree with the sagacity and practised observation of the man of the world, the picturesque touches and delightful garrulity of Herodotus. In Marco Polo's time, northern and southern China were distinguished respectively by the names of Kathay and Manji; and in making use of his book for illustrations of Chinese civilization, we must observe, to which of these portions of the empire, the facts which he furnishes relate. It was in the South that the purely Chinese constitution of society was to be most distinctly seen. The North was then under the direct and powerful influence of the Mongol or Tartar invaders, in all the pride and vigour of recent conquest, and not yet assimilated to the manners of their more civilized subjects. The period of Marco Polo's visit to China gives, however, increased interest to his work, as it sets before us in vivid contrast the characters of the Tartars and the Chinese, who from time immemorial have been engaged in the conflict which is natural to a wandering and a settled population, living in each others' immediate vicinity, and are yet, after all, branches perhaps of one primitive stock, descending originally from the Altaian chain, and exhibit only the difference of the same race, long habituated to civilization, or just emerging from barbarism. There is no evidence, that even in northern China the Mongols made any great alteration in existing institutions; they seem rather to have left the political and social organization as they found it. The Venetian's descriptions harmonise for the most part with the accounts of native historians. The order of administration and the ceremonial of the court appear to have been the same. At the commencement of the year, the subjects of the Khan came and offered him their gifts, and his name, inscribed on a tablet and held up to public gaze by the chief priest, was adored with profound reverence by the assembled levee. The empire was divided into thirty-two provinces, conformably to the arrangement which had been introduced in the reign of Tsin-chi-hoang. The business of the government was divided into two principal departments, the military and the civil, each conducted by a council of twelve nobles. Of these councils or boards, the civil appointed the governors of the provinces, subject to the approval of the Khan himself. In Kanbalu, now Peking, the capital of northern China, the civil board had a large and handsome suite of offices, where the business of each province was transacted in a separate bureau. On their departure for their provinces, the governors received from the Khan a gold or silver tablet, according to their rank. The military board, in the time of Marco Polo, constituted the highest tribunal in the state. Here the tablets of honour were distributed to the officers of the army, proportionate to the extent of command with which they were invested. These tablets of honour, both civil and military, have considerable resemblance to the orders, with which the sovereigns of Europe still decorate the individuals whom they wish to distinguish. The regularity and rigid spirit of subordination conspicuous in these proceedings, with the direct dependance of all the details of administration, even in the remotest provinces, on the central government, are impressed with the strongest marks of Chinese civilization. The same character of order and exactness distinguishes the arrangements for keeping open a ready communication with the capital. Stretching out in every direction there were high roads planted on each side with trees, and kept in repair by officers appointed for that purpose by government. At certain intervals were posts, with relays of horses and accommodation for travellers. These establishments were maintained with an immediate reference to the purposes of government, but they must also have greatly facilitated the internal commerce of the country. Foot messengers with belts attached to their girdles, were stationed every three miles on these great roads, for the conveyance to and fro of letters and dispatches. The government messengers were also authorized to exact the use of horses and boats from the people of the district, who were entitled in consequence to a proportionate remission from their annual payment of taxes. On occasions of great emergency, expresses were employed, who carried with them the tablet of the ger-falcon, in token of the special authority they were empowered to exercise. All such arrangements are convincing proofs of a long-established and well-organized civilization. Some usages are mentioned by Marco Polo, which must clearly be considered as belonging rather to Tartar than to Chinese manners;-I allude to the inordinate devotion of the Khan and his nobles to the pleasures of the chase,-a taste, in which the Venetian merchant appears to have enthusiastically participated. This passion is characteristic of tribes, who have reached a similar grade of social advancement with the Mon |