196 REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS 



Take the first line on p. 254 where we have "fan yi ming yi tsi." Now 

 if Giles's dictionary had been consulted the letter y could have been, 

 eliminated twice. Yet the critic who accused the old system of being 

 wasteful in letters in a glaring way, sticks to this system of waste of 

 two or three letters. It is so throughout. So we strongly advise 

 Dr. Laufer to destroy "my system" and have nothing more to do- 

 with it. M.O. 



Peking. By Juliet Bredon. Shanghai : Kelly and Walsh, Ltd. 



We wonder that we have not heard before of Miss Juliet Bredon.. 

 Possibly this is her work of budding talents — her 'hsiu ts'ai' work. 

 It is to be hoped that we shall hear of her again and again in the 

 coming years. She has a command of words, fertility of expression/ 

 a rich imagination, and vivid sympathy, — qualities sufficient to give- 

 distinction to a book. This work is worthy of Peking, and, Peking is 

 worthy of it. The authoress enters into the spirit of her subject. She 

 moves through the past with imagination and tries to understand and 

 expound the present. She becomes an excellent guide, conducting the 

 traveller over much unfamiliar ground : directing his thoughts to 

 unobserved objects of art and historic interest, and, as the process- 

 proceeds a canvas of a vast and beautiful panorama is unfolded before 

 the reader, leaving an impression of splendid creations. At the same 

 time, unfortunately, there is created the feeling of the evanescence of all 

 beauty and the decay of all creations, and even in those things, where 

 time does not destroy but adds its lustre and depth of mellowness to 

 works of art and beauty, man the destroyer, must come in with his 

 ruthlessness. Readers have almost reconciled themselves to the fact 

 that those barbarians Timur and Tamerlane, were conquering vandals, 

 but they do receive a shock in reading the account of the shocking sack 

 of the Summer Palaces deliberately planned by wise and enlightened 

 men. When it is remembered what thought, what wealth had been 

 bestowed to perfect these mansions and pleasure gardens ; how the 

 wealth of Empire, the genius of man had gone into their production ; 

 how the Emperor Chien Lung, thrilled by the pictures and descriptions 

 of Versailles brought by the Jesuit priests, went and planned gardens 

 and buildings on a superb scale that were veritably an "earthly 

 paradise," it is amazing that Lord Elgin and the British Commander- 

 in-Chief, in their eager desire to make a fitting example and some great 

 reprisal for the violation of a flag of truce, should determine to destroy 

 these. And "they took the soul out of the palace." They found a monu- 

 ment of human genius, they left it a monument of human folly. It- 

 would have been no loss to have taken instead one of the arrogant- 



