CANTERBURY TALES 



1162 



CANTON 



There are numerous other churches and edu- 

 cational institutions, including a grammar 

 school founded by Henry VIII. The ancient 

 walls surrounding the city can still be traced, 

 and many relics point to the fact that it was 

 an important military pest under the Romans. 

 The trade of the city is chiefly agricultural, and 

 it has tanneries, breweries and other manufac- 

 tories. Population, 24,889. 



Archbishop of Canterbury. The primate and 

 ruling head of the Established Church of Eng- 

 land has since the year 599 been styled the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury. The holder of this 

 office has always been chosen for his learning, 

 piety and ability to rule. The most famous 

 archbishops of olden days were Saint Augus- 

 tine, Lanfranc, Saint Dunstan, Thomas a 

 Becket, Cranmer and Laud. The archbishop 

 is granted great privileges of rank, and from 

 his hands the ruler of Great Britain receives 

 anointment and the crown in Westminster 

 Abbey. The present archbishop, Randall 

 Thomas Davidson, was appointed in 1903. 



CANTERBURY TALES, the great produc- 

 tion of the first renowned English poet, Geof- 

 frey Chaucer (which see). His plan for this 

 work was most ambitious, and although he died 

 before he had carried it to completion, there 

 remains enough to give it a place as one of 

 the remarkable works of English literature. 

 In the delightful Prologue, known to every 

 high-school student, there is described a com- 

 pany of men and women who are about to 

 set out on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas 

 a Becket. These are of every rank of life, and 

 Chaucer showed himself in his descriptions of 

 them a master character-painter. To while 

 away the time on the journey they plan to tell 

 stories, each person to contribute two. These 

 romantic tales, most of which are in verse, are 

 now little read except by students of early 

 English poetry, but the Prologue repays study 

 by any person. It is a little difficult to read, 

 for the spelling is different from that of to-day, 

 but editions with notes are many and inex- 

 pensive, and the difficulty soon passes with 

 practice. The following quotations, which are 

 very well known, need no interpreter: 



He was a veray parflt gentil knight. 



And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche. 



CANTON, kan'ton, the name of a political 

 division in some countries of Europe, derived 

 from the Italian cantone, meaning a corner or 

 angle. In Switzerland each of the twenty-two 

 states comprising the Swiss republic is known 



as a canton (see SWITZERLAND). The French 

 canton is a division of the political unit known 

 as arrondissement, and is the seat of a justice 

 of the peace. There are 2,908 cantons in 

 France, each consisting of twelve communes 

 (see COMMUNE). 



CANTON, canton', a very important com- 

 mercial center of the Orient, a Chinese city 

 of great antiquity, and until the middle of the 

 nineteenth century entirely removed from the 

 influences of modern civilization. Like all 

 Eastern seaports, it is divided into two parts 

 an old city, distinctly Oriental, harboring all 

 the manners, customs and prejudices of the 

 East, and a modern part, devoted to commerce 

 and forming a neutral territory on which East 

 and West meet to trade. The city is admirably 

 situated on the eastern bank of the Pearl 

 River, eighty miles from the sea, in the prov- 

 ince of Kwang-Tung. The ancient part is sur- 

 rounded by a fortified wall six miles in circum- 

 ference, with twelve gates for traffic. These 

 gates are shut at night and carefully guarded. 

 Two water gates protect the river east and 

 west of the city. The river is the only home 

 of many thousands of the inhabitants of Can- 

 ton, who occupy boats and rafts moored to the 

 banks. 



According to Western ideas the term "clean" 

 can be applied to very few Asiatic cities, but 

 Canton almost deserves that description. The 

 streets of the old city are narrow, with houses 

 of only two stories, the ground floor generally 

 being a store or warehouse. The assortment 

 of merchandise found in these unpretentious 

 stores is almost endless. The products of every 

 quarter of the globe are here collected, modern 

 inventions from the West lying by the side of 

 Eastern curiosities thousands of years old. The 

 Chinese do not use milk either fresh or in the 

 form of butter or cheese, but grocery stores 

 contain such food as horse, cat and dog flesh, 

 hawks, owls and edible birds' nests. 



The new city is cosmopolitan. Chinese 

 merchants have assimilated Western ideas and 

 are expert, courteous and industrious. While 

 the old city retains its pagodas, mosques and 

 temples, the new quarter contains churches, 

 libraries, schools and business premises of the 

 most modern architecture. The officials of 

 the city and province reside in the old town; 

 representatives of foreign countries and their 

 staffs occupy a special quarter of the new city 

 outside the walls. 



The industries of Canton are varied, embrac- 

 ing the manufacture of silks, cotton goods, 



