THREE BOOKS ON CHINA 



Cliina: The Long-lived Empire. By Eliza Rnhaniah Scidniore, Foreign Secre- 

 tary of the National Geographic Society, Author of "JInrikisha Days in 

 Japan," "/((ca.- The Garden of the Easl,'^ etc. Witli inanjMllustrations. 

 8vo, pp. XV + 466. 12.50. New York: The Century Co. 1900. 

 Made timely by the chance of national events, Miss Scidniore's latest book is 

 a milestone markinjj; the progress of Occidental knowledge concerning the Far 

 East. Writing in narrative style, touching lightly on the greater episodes and 

 characters in the history of The Long lived Empire — and this chiefly in con- 

 nection with their monuments and relics — ostensibly recording her own obser- 

 vations and experiences, and referring in incidental fashion only to previous 

 travelers from Marco Polo and Abbe Hue to Rockhill and Sven Hedin, and to 

 the standard hook-makers from Yule and Wade to our own Wells Williams, 

 Heher Bishop, and General Wilson, the author skims the cream of a rich 

 literature, condenses nuich knowledge into small space, and imparts a pleas- 

 ing personal Havor to the lump. The permanent value of the work 

 is enhanced by the fact that the chapters were written before the recent 

 Boxer outbreak, with its world-shocking consequences, so that tiie treatment 

 is temperate and judicial. Viewed in the light of recent events, portions of 

 the book — especially the opening chapter on "Tiie Degenerate E^mpire" — 

 seem curiously prophetic. There is an ethnologic aroma to this initial chap- 

 ter: " No Occidental ever saw within or understood the working of the yellow 

 brain, w'hich starts from and arrives at a different point by reverse and in- 

 verse processes we can neither follow nor comprehend. There is 

 little sympathy, no kinship nor common feeling, and never affection possi- 

 ble between the Anglo-Saxon and the Chinese. Nothing in Chinese character 

 or traits appeals warml}' to our hearts or imagination, nothing touches; and 

 of all the people of earth they most entirely lack ' soul,' charm, magnetism, at- 

 tractiveness. We maj'^ yield them an intellectual admiration on some grounds, 

 but no warmer pulse beats for them" (pp. 4, 5). These expressions touch on 

 the fundamental fart of ethnology that, while all minds of given culture-grade 

 respond alike to like stinuili, minds of different degrees of culture, ditl'erent 

 races, do not work alike; the utterances imply realization of the fact (whatso- 

 ever the view of the theory) that the users of the highly associative Chinese 

 language can never harmonize with the users of concrete Anglo-Saxon speech — 

 at least until the higher vehicle of tiiought replaces the lower, as in certain 

 brilliant examples of recent history ; and these, like other passages leavening 

 the book, explain the charm of China to the Occidental traveh i and ri-ader. 

 " It is a land of contrailiction.s, puzzles, mysteries, enigmas" (p. (>). The 

 second chapter, "The Kdge of Chihli," describes the way now trud liy foreign 

 feet and hehl by Ajreign arms, and the third, "Tientsin," portrays the an- 

 <Ment city of over a million i)eoi)l(! now showing large in the eyes of the world ; 

 the seventh chapter, "The Tartar ('ity of Kuhlai Khan," and the eighth, 

 " Imperial, rnrpic Peking," are of no less living interest todiiy, while the 



