are always pretty fully clothed, and exhibit no such specimens of nudity as abound in the Grecian Pantheon. Still the drapery is generally executed with remarkable truth and effect, and this feature often drew the attention of those who composed our embassies, in their visits to the various temples which occurred in the route.

The

It remains only to say a few words relative to the Chinese art of music. On this point Mr. Hüttner, who was attached to Lord Macartney's mission, was of opinion that "their gamut was such as Europeans would call imperfect, their keys being inconsistent, that is, wandering from flats to sharps, and inversely, except when directed by a bell struck to sound the proper notes. Chinese in playing on instruments discovered no knowledge of semitones, nor did they seem to have any idea of counterpoint, or parts in music. There was always one melody, however great the number of performers; though, in a few instances, some of the instruments played in the lower octave, while the rest continued in the upper, and thus approached to harmony." Their instruments are mostly tuned in unison, and they have little or no idea of accompaniments. The antiquity of music in China is proved by its being frequently mentioned by Confucius himself, and the encouragement which he gives to its cultivation might have been expected, in the course of time, to produce something better than the imperfect art which now exists there. They have certain characters to express the name of every note in their very limited scale. These they use in writing down their airs; but whether this mode of notation is indigenous, or whether they obtained it from the Jesuits, is doubtful. It is indeed stated that the Emperor Káng-hy was much surprised when P. Pereira pricked down the Chinese tunes as they were played, and repeated them afterwards.

Their instruments are very numerous, consisting of different species of lutes and guitars; several flutes and other wind-instruments; a squeaking fiddle with three strings; a sort of harmonicon of wires, touched with two slen

der slips of bamboo; systems of bells and pieces of sonorous metal; and drums covered with snake-skin. In lieu of catgut, they string their instruments with silk and wire. Many of the Chinese have a ready ear for music, though accompanied by such a bad national taste. The magistrate of the Macao district was on a visit to the writer of this, when the piano being touched with a Chinese air, of which the music is given in Barrow's Travels, he immediately turned with a look of pleased surprise, and named the tune.

Among the Chinese instruments we must not forget to mention one which emits, as nearly as possible, the tones of the Scottish bagpipe, without the buzzing sound that is produced by what is called the drone of the Îatter. The melody of the Chinese and Caledonian pipes is so exactly similar, that it has never failed to excite the attention of the Scotch who have visited China; and indeed the recognition has been mutual, for when a Highland piper (who had been taken out in an Indiaman) was sent up to Canton to attend a meeting of the sons of St. Andrew on the national anniversary, the Chinese were no less struck with the picturesque costume of the plaided Gael than ravished by the strains which proceeded from his instrument. It may be hoped that, in this respect, they evinced a more correct taste than was displayed by one of the sailors on board the same ship with the Highlander. It was on some occasion when the latter, with pistol and dirk at his side, was parading the deck with his pipes, that the unlucky Jack, tempted by the mere spirit of mischief, or willing to lower the inflation of his Scottish shipmate, snatched up a young pig, and placing it between his right arm and his side, squeezed the poor animal until it emitted sounds as loud at least, if not as musical, as those of the instrument which it thus unconsciously burlesqued. The action was so irresistably comic, that shouts of laughter echoed through the ship; and the piper would have been provoked to take summary vengeance on the author of the jest, had he not been prevented by the interference of the by-standers.

THE Chinese profess to make a general distribution of human knowledge under the three heads of "Heaven, Earth, and Man," and this may appear to some readers to be not altogether unlike the three-fold division proposed by Lord Bacon, of "God, Nature, and Man." A well-known encyclopædia, in sixty-four volumes, called San-tsae-too-hoey, which dates about the end of the sixteenth century, consists of wood-cuts, illustrated by letter-press, in the three departments above stated. This work, however, having been the compilation of one person only, and consisting chiefly of plates, is superficial even for the Chinese, and does not contain a full account of their science such as it is. The character of the book may be partly gathered from the following account of its contents and method of arrangement. Under the head of Heaven, of course comes astronomy, and this includes something of what was learned from the Arabians and Europeans. The department of Earth includes principally their imperfect notions of geography. The third division, that of Man, is by far the most copious. It contains representations of persons famous in history, and of different tribes of men. Then is introduced the subject of the Chinese cycle (which rather belongs to the first department), and of the numerical combinations of Fo-hy. Next come buildings; furniture; implements used in husbandry, manufactures, and the arts of peace; arms and warlike weapons; wood-cuts in anatomy; costumes; games of skill, specimens of ancient inscriptions; botany and natural history, as applicable to medicine; active sports and exercises; specimens of coins and money.

The actual state of the sciences in China may perhaps be ranked with their condition in Europe, some time previous to the adoption of the inductive method in philosophy. The

constitutional ingenuity and industry of the people has led them to fall upon various practical results, in spite, as it would seem, of a feature in their character and habits which is opposed to the progress of knowledge. They profess to set no value on abstract science, apart from some obvious and immediate end of utility. Among ourselves, the practical application of scientific discoveries is sometimes long subsequent to the discoveries themselves, which might perhaps never have been made, had not science been followed up through its by-paths for its own sake merely, or with a very remote view to utility in practice. The Chinese always estimate such matters by their immediate and apparent cui bono. Dr. Abel relates, that after satisfying a mandarin in reply to his questions concerning some of our useful manufactures, he took occasion to mention that we had metals, which on coming in contact with water burst into flame. "I had some potassium with me (he adds), and was desirous of showing its properties to him. He immediately inquired concerning its uses, and, when these could not be very satisfactorily explained to him, looked too contemptuously to induce me to venture an experiment." And yet this discovery of the metallic base of potash was one result of the investigations of Sir Humphrey Davy, whose practical applications of his scientific discoveries, to useful and beneficial purposes, were of such inestimable value and importance.

A surprising enumeration might be made of instances in which the Chinese appear to have stumbled by mere chance upon useful inventions, without the previous possession of any scientific clue. Cases, however, occur in which it may be fairly suspected that they were indebted to the European missionaries. Without knowing anything, for instance, of

make use of a mineral which they call Cha-she, or "tea-stone," from the resemblance of its transparent hue to a weak infusion of black tea. This, in all probability, is a smoky quartz, or silex allied to the cairngoram of Scotland. In some instances the Chinese have been known to attempt slavish copies of European telescopes; but a little science became requisite in the construction of instruments consisting of compound lenses, and they accordingly failed. When, however, a few specimens of Sir David Brewster's optical toy, the kaleidoscope, first reached Canton, these were easily imitated. The Chinese became exceedingly taken with them; vast numbers were immediately manufactured on the spot, and sent up the country,

under the appropriate name of Wan-huu-tung' or "tubes of ten thousand flowers."

The jargon employed in their pseudoscience, and the singular resemblance which this bears to the condition of physical knowledge, not very long ago, even in our own country, is deserving of some remark. It is pretty generally known that, within a comparatively recent period of our history, the sciences of medicine and astrology were very gravely combined. A rather handsome monument in Mortlake churchyard, dated as late as 1715, bears a Latin inscription to the memory of " John Partridge, Astrologer and Doctor of Medicine, who made physic for two kings and one queen, to wit, Charles II., William III., and Queen Mary." It was

the deplorable condition of the healing art about or a little before that period, in France, also, that exposed it to the unmerciful ridicule of Molière. It is likely that most readers may not have fallen in with a thick quarto volume, dated 1647, and entitled "A modest Treatise of Astrologie, by William Lilly." The work is dedicated to Bolstrod Whitlock, Esq., Member of Parliament, and among other matter contains "Artrologicall aphorisms beneficiall for Physicians;"-as, "He that first enters upon a cure in the hour of Mars shall find his patient disaffected to him, and partly disdain and reject his medicines, his pains ill-rewarded, and his person slighted." In the same work are expounded the supposed connexions between the several planets and the parts of the body: "He will be infinitely oppressed (says this learned Theban), who in the hour of Mars shall first get an hot disease, and in the hour of Saturne a cold one;" "When Jupiter is author of the sicknesse, he demonstrates ill-affection of the liver;" "Mars being the cause of a feaver, and in Leo, shows ebolition or a boyling of the humours, continuall burning feavers, whose originall cause springs from the great veines near the heart.

12

The round-faced prodigy t'avert

From doing town and country hurt:
And if an owl have so much power,

Why should not planets have much more?" &c.

2 They have also some vague notions of the humoral pathology, long since exploded in this country, but alluded to in the above extracts. "They talk (as Dr. Abel correctly states) of ulcers being outlets to noxious matter, and divide diseases and remedies into two classes, hot and cold, depending greatly on purgatives for driving out the heat of the body."

295

In treating of the planets and their significations, "Saturne (quoth Lilly) is cold and dry, melancholic, earthly;" "Jupiter governeth all infirmities in the iver; of colours, sea-green or blew, a mixt yellow or green; "Mars, in nature hot and dry, he delighteth in red colour, and in those savours which are bitter, sharp, and burn the tongue;" "Venus, in colours she signifieth white; "Mercury, in the elements he is the water." All this looks very much as if the philosophy of our forefathers had been derived intermediately from China; and it is this easy plan, of systematizing without experiment, that has kept the latter country in the dark, and infested every department of its physical knowledge; while the inductive philosophy recommended in the novum organon of Bacon has done such wonders in Europe. As a specimen of Chinese reasoning, nothing can well be imagined more silly than the following:-"The upper half of the body partakes of the Yang, and the nature of the heaven, and the medicines suited to that part of the body are the heads of plants; the body of the plant is for diseases of the middle," &c.

And yet when they condescend to abandon their theories, and to be guided by observation and common sense, they can occasionally talk very differently. Dentrecolles translated a medical treatise composed by a Chinese practitioner, and called Chûng-seng, or "long life," being in fact an essay on diet and regimen. This, as it proceeds entirely on the personal experience of the individual, really contains something that is both true

3 See page 209.

and useful. Among us, such a work might be arranged under the four heads of Air, Exercise, Diet, and the Passions. Our Chinese author has likewise chosen four heads, but calls them, "the Passions, Diet, the Actions of the Day, and the Rest at Night," comprising, however, much that is the same in reality under different names. They have a high notion of the value of sleep; and their maxim is, that "one sleepless night cannot be compensated by ten nights of sleep."

As remarked by Dr. Abel, the drug-shops of the Chinese contain an immense list of simples, a few gums, and some minerals. These are sold in small packets, each containing a dose enveloped in a wrapper which describes the use of the medicine. Chinese doctors paste up and distribute hand-bills in the same manner with the lower walks of the faculty among us, and generally with reference to the same diseases. The druggists' shops are remarkable for their superior cleanliness, and not unlike those of Europe in the arrangement of the drawers, jars, &c. It is well known that the most considerable work on Chinese materia medica is the famous Pun-tsaou, or Herbal, which is not confined to botany merely, as its name might imply, but extends to the animal and mineral kingdoms also. At the head of all remedies stands ginseng, which used once to be sold for eight times its weight in silver. Tea, in various modes of preparation, is much valued as a medicine; and different parts of rare animals are included in the list, with the reputation of properties as multifarious and inconsistent as the pills of a London quack.

In some instances, they show a whimsical preference to one substance over another, which apparently possesses exactly the same nature and qualities. From the laurus camphora, a large timber tree which grows plentifully in their own country, they obtain easily and cheaply vast quantities of camphor, which is sold as low as a few pence the pound. Instead of this, however, they use in medicine a species which is imported from

1 The author is glad to find his opinion confirmed by that of Mr. Herbert Mayo, who observes, in reference to some portions of this treatise-" In substance they are excellent." Philosophy of Living, p. 171.

Sumatra and Borneo, in very small fragments about the size of a pea, picked in a crystallized state from the interior of the dryobalanops camphora, and sold at Canton for a price which is equivalent to 41. sterling the pound weight. As a drastic medicine, the pa-tow (croton tiglium) is used in combination with rhubarb. Among the most effectual means for the alleviation or removal of local pain, they reckon the application of the moxa, or actual cautery. This moxa is prepared by bruising the stems of an artemisia, called gae-tsaou, in a mortar, and then selecting the most downy fibres. These, being set on fire upon the part affected, are said to consume rapidly without producing any severe pain. The fibre of the artemisia is also used by the Chinese as tinder for lighting their pipes, being previously steeped in a solution of nitre, and fired, either by means of a flint and steel, or a small burningglass; which last expedient the mandarins in the embassy sometimes displayed to us with much ostentation, as something that should astound our ignorance.

Sir William Temple, in his works,2 has left a paper on the use of the moxa, proving that remedy to have effectually cured him of a fit of the gout. He met with it in Holland while residing as minister at the Hague, where a friend told him, "it was a certain kind of moss that grew in the East Indies; that their way was, whenever any body fell into a fit of the gout, to take a small quantity of it, and form it into a figure, broad at bottom as a two-pence, and pointed at top: to set the bottom exactly upon the place where the violence of the pain was fixed; then with a small round perfumed match (made likewise in the Indies) to give fire to the top of the moss; which, burning down by degrees, came at length to the skin and burned it till the moss was consumed to ashes." From this descrip tion, and the statement that the remedy came direct from Batavia, it is plain that the Dutch obtained it in their intercourse with China, either from Canton or Fokien.

A physician whom Dr. Abel saw at Canton was entirely destitute of anatomical know

2 Vol. iii. p. 254.