4 FALSE ACCOUNTS OF CHINA. [Cuar. LL 
authors, than for facts concerning China and the 
Chinese. We were in the position of little children 
who gaze with admiration and wonder at a penny 
peep-show in a fair or market-place at home. — We 
looked with magnifying eyes on every thing Chinese; 
and fancied, for the time at least, that what we saw 
was certainly real. But the same children who 
look with wonder upon the scenes of Trafalgar and 
Waterloo, when the curtain falls, and their penny- 
worth of sights has passed by, find that, instead 
of being amongst those striking scenes which have 
just passed in review before their eyes, they are 
only, after all, in the market-place of their native 
town. So it is with ‘‘ children of a larger growth.” 
This mystery served the purpose of the Chinese so 
long as it lasted; and although we perhaps did not 
give them credit for all to which they pretended, 
at least we gave them much more than they 
really deserved. 
Viewing the subject in this light we have little dif- 
ficulty in accounting for the false colouring which 
has been given to every picture drawn by authors 
who have written on this country, and who have 
extolled to the skies her perfection in the arts, in 
agriculture, in horticulture, the fertility of the 
soil, the industry of the people, and the excellence 
of her government and laws. But the curtain 
which had been drawn around the celestial country 
for ages, has now been rent asunder; and instead 
of viewing an enchanted fairy-land, we find, after 
all, that China is just like other countries. 
