
324 
THE MIGHTY KINGDOM OF CHINA. 
‘A CHINESE PUZZLE.” 
THE GREATEST OF ALL PUZZLES is “ the 
CHINESE PUZZLE.” Not the complication of 
rings and rods that bothers the school-hoy— 
nor ivory sphere within ivory sphere, which | 
taxes the constructive powers of European | 
mechanics to imitate—but the Chinese people 
themselves. Historically and ethnologically, 
it is difficult to know what to make of them. 
It would really be a great convenience if 
we could resolve the whole empire of Celes- 
tials into a myth. We know too much of 
them, and we know too little. They are, and 
they are not. They have been, and they 
have not been. China has been peopled 
since the flood, and it has not been peopled 
sooner than the seventh or eighth century 
before Christ. China was an Assyrian colony, 
and an Egyptian colony. It was Japhetic 
in its origin, and it was Semitic. It had its 
arts from Egypt, and it lent its arts to Egypt. 
Moses, according to Professor Hermann, of 
Strasburg, knew all about the manufacture 
of gunpowder, which he had learned of the 
priests of Egypt; and from Egypt the 
“ villanous” manufacture was carried to the 
land of Cathay. 
China had its mythology from Greece, and 
the Grecians borrowed their mythology from 
the Chinese. They adore God, and they 
have no word even for God. They had 
clocks in the nimth century, and were aston- 
ished at the sight of Father Ricci’s clock in 
the sixteenth. They were eminent astrono- 
mers, and yet were such bunglers that they 
had Mohammedans to attend to their observa- 
tories, and to calculate their almanacs, for 
several centuries. 
Their chronology harmonises with the 
chronology of Moses, and it does not harmo- 
nise with the chronology of Moses. They 
worshipped the cross before the cross was 
erected on Calvary, and they despised the 
cross when it was preached to them. They 
knew the books of the Old Testament before 
they were very well known in England or 
France; and they knew nothing about these 
books until the appearance of Milne and Mor- 
rison’s translation in the present century. 
The list of contradictions could as easily be 
multiplied, as chapter and verse can be given, 
endorsed by high names, for every contradic- 
tion that has been above stated. The Chinese 
have been, in short, shuttlecocks for philo- 
sophical battledores. 
But the greatest ‘puzzle ” of China, after 
all, is the facts of China. The Chinese were 
an ingenious, lying, cheating, learned people 
ten centuries ago; and they are so still—not 
a whit more ingenious, not a lie more menda- 
cious, not a cash more dishonest, not a letter 
more learned. What they were, they are. 

KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 
All the world has marched on to right or 
left during this period. China alone has 
stood still— eating rice, exposing small babies, 
swallowing swords, producing scholars, and, 
respectfully be it spoken, practising “ artful 
dodges,” just as under the dynasty of Han, 
or when Confucius sat down to a cup of 
“esthetic tea”? and controversy with the 
profound Lao-tze, whose mother gave him to 
the world after seventy years’ gestation, and 
he appeared a hoary-headed baby. 
For this reason, it is almost immaterial 
what book upon China one takes up to read. 
The most ancient book tells as much about 
this singular people as the most recent book ; 
and all the better, because ancient writers 
were not afflicted with modern prejudices. 
Renaudot’s. two Mohammedan travellers, 
Carpini Rubruquis and Marco Polo are, 
jointly and severally, quite as much to the 
point as Staunton, Davies, Gutzlaff, Huc, or 
Callery. Mendoza, whom we have here 
before us, by favor of the Hakluyt Society, 
may be taken as a guide to China and the > 
Chinese as safely as the most modern writer ; 
because Mendoza had a good eye to perceive, 
and a clever hand to detail what he saw; and 
because the China of the nineteenth century 
is twin brother to China of the sixteenth—so 
alike are they in stature, feature, and com- 
plexion. 
China had no historical beginning; no de- 
velopment, no growth. It came into the 
world with all its teeth in its head, ready to 
masticate from rice upwards to the unicorn, 
whose flesh is a dainty. It had no boyhood 
as a nation, but hecame all at once a stunted 
man; and such it has continued, still presery- 
ing its teeth, and-having small need of a 
barber. We have never read of Chinese 
epics or bucolics; but we are assured that 
before Homer lost his sight, and took to 
ballad-singng—before Sappho vindicated, 
practically, the right of woman to publish— 
before dainty Horace wrote odes and had 
lamprey suppers with Mzecenas—China had 
its writers, its men of letters, its naturalists 
and historians. 
Before Bavaria had its beer, China had its 
tea. Before the German had his blanket, 
the Chinaman had his robe of silk. When 
Kelt was proud of his wooden fibule, and 
plaited his hair to keep it tidy, there were 
gentlemen in Nanking, and cits in Canfu, who 
fastened their robes with brooches of amber, 
and who made wholesome use of combs of 
ivory. Long before Regnar, the Norse Vik- 
ing, was surnamed, on account of his continu- 
ations, Lodbrog, or, in plain English, Leather- 
breeches, the Chinese dandy went a-wooing 
in silken pantaloons. 
When Alfred, or the venerable Bede, was 
scrawling tediously on rough paper of a night, 
guided by faint light from a horn lantern, 
