turned. Six years afterwards an envoy was again despatched, who, with his whole retinue, was murdered by the Japanese. This led to an armament of no less than 100,000 men being despatched from China by Koblai Khân, for the conquest of the country. On their arrival upon the northern coast, a storm arose which destroyed the greater number of the vessels; and the Japanese, attacking them on shore in several engagements, either killed or made captives of nearly the whole force, of which it is said that only three individuals ever returned to their own country. This agrees in the main with the account given by Marco Polo.

The Chinese dynasty of Ming, which drove out and succeeded the Mongols, suffered severely from the predatory attacks of the Japanese on the coast, in return for the hostilities which the latter had experienced from the family of Koblai Khân. Envoys were sent to remonstrate on the subject, and to

invite the Japanese to friendly intercourse, in which a hint at homage seems not to have been forgotten. They were permitted to land, as they were not sent by the hateful Mongols; but no better success appears to have attended their efforts to obtain tribute, although some of the persons employed as envoys were priests of Budh, for whom the Japanese have a respect, on account of their connexion with their own national religion. The piracies along the eastern coasts of China were frequently repeated, but they seem to have led to no renewed attempts on the part of the celestial empire to punish or subdue Japan. Some commercial intercourse at present subsists between the two countries, principally carried on in junks from Ningpo and Amoy. The Chinese justly value the real Japanware above their own inferior manufactures in lacker, and this ware, with copper, seems to be the chief article of import.

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ALTHOUGH a laboured history in detail of the Chinese empire is not suited to the character and objects of this work, still a rapid sketch of such revolutions as that country has undergone, more especially in the last Tartar conquest, seems requisite, in order rightly to understand some peculiarities in the customs of the people, and even some changes that have taken place among a race generally remarkable for the unvarying sameness of its manners and institutions.

Without attempting to deny to China a very high degree of antiquity, it is now pretty universally admitted, on the testimony of the most respectable native historians, that this is a point which has been very much exaggerated. In reference to the earliest traditions of their history, a famous commentator, named Choofootse, observes, "It is impossible to give entire credit to the accounts of these remote ages." China has, in fact, her mythology in common with all other nations, and under this head we must range the persons styled Fohy, Shin-noong, Hoangty, and their immediate successors, who, like the demigods and heroes of Grecian fable, rescued mankind by their ability or enterprise from the most primitive barbarism, and have since been invested with superhuman attributes. The most extravagant prodigies are related of these persons, and the most incongruous qualities attributed to them;-according to Swift's receipt for making a hero, who, if his virtues are not reducible to consistency, is to have them laid in a heap upon him. "National vanity, and a love of the marvellous, have influenced in a similar manner the early history of most other countries, and furnished materials for nursery tales, as soon as the spirit of sober investigation has supplanted that appetite

for wonders which marks the infancy of nations as well as of individuals."

The fabulous part of Chinese history commences with Puonkoo, who is represented in a dress of leaves, and concerning whom everything is wild and obscure. He is said to have been followed by a number of persons with fanciful names, who, in the style of the Hindoo chronology, reigned for thousands of years, until the appearance of Fohy, who, it is said, invented the arts of music, numbers, &c., and taught his subjects to live in a civilized state. He inhabited what is now the northern province of Shensy, anciently the country of Tsin, or Chin, whence some derive the word China, by which the empire has been for ages designated in India. Fohy (often absurdly confounded with Fo, or Budh) and his two successors are styled the "Three Emperors," and reputed the inventors of all the arts and accommodations of life. these, Shin-noong, or the "divine husbandman," instructed his people in agriculture; and Hoang-ty divided all the lands into groups of nine equal squares, of which the middle one was to be cultivated in common for the benefit of the state. He is said likewise to have invented the mode of noting the cycle of sixty years, the foundation of the Chinese system of chronology. The series of cycles is at least made to extend back to the time in which he is reputed to have lived, about 2600 years before Christ: but it is obvious that there could be no difficulty in calculating it much farther back than even that, had the inventors so pleased; and this date is therefore no certain proof of antiquity.

Of

To the "three Emperors" succeeded the

1 Royal Asiat. Trans. vol. i. Memoir concerning the Chinese.

"five Sovereigns," and the designations seem equally arbitrary and fanciful in both cases, being in fact distinctions without a difference. The fictitious character of this early period might be proved in abundance of instances, and it is the worst feature of Du Halde's compilation to set everything down without comment, and to be filled with general and unmeaning eulogies out of Chinese works, whatever may be the subject of description. He observes that one of these five Sovereigns regulated the Calendar, "and desired to begin the year on the first day of the month in which the sun should be nearest the 15th degree of Aquarius, for which he is called the author and father of the ephemeris. He chose the time when the sun passes through the middle of this sign, because it is the season in which the earth is adorned with plants, trees renew their verdure, and all nature seems re-animated:"-this of course must mean the spring season. Now the person alluded to is said to have lived more than 2000 years before Christ, and, according to the usual mode of calculating the precession of the equinoxes, the sun must have passed through the 15th of Aquarius, in his time, somewhere about the middle of December. In a Chinese historian this strange blunder is not surprising, and only shows the character of their earlier records; but it ought to have been corrected in a European work.

Yaou and Shun, the two last of the five sovereigns, were the patterns of all Chinese emperors. To Yaou is attributed the intercalation (in their lunar year) of an additional lunar month seven times in every nineteen years; the number of days in seven lunations being nearly equal to nineteen multiplied by eleven, which last is the number of days by which the lunar year falls short of the solar. Yaou is said to have set aside his own son, and chosen Shun to be his successor, on account of his virtues. The choice of the reigning emperor is the rule of succession at the present day, and it is seldom that the eldest son succeeds in preference to the rest. To the age of Shun the Chinese refer their tradition of an extensive flooding of the lands, which by some has been identified with the Mosaic deluge. It was for his merit in draining the country, or drawing

He commenced the period called Hea, upwards of 2100 years before Christ. Yu is described as nine cubits in height, and it is stated that "the skies rained gold for three days; "which certainly (as Dr. Morrison observes) "lessens the credit of the history of this period." In fact the whole of the long space of time included under Hea and Shâng is full of the marvellous. Chow-wing, however, the last of the Shâng, (about 1100 years before Christ,) was a tyrant, by all accounts, not more remarkable for his cruelty or extravagancies than many other tyrants have been. Frequent allusion is made to him in Chinese books, as well as to his wife, and various stories are related of their crimes. One of the Emperor's relations having ventured to remonstrate with him, the cruel monarch ordered his heart to be brought to him for inspection, observing, that he wished to see in what respects the heart of a sage differed from those of common men. With the Chinese, the heart is the seat of the mind.

At length Woo-wong, literally "the martial king," was called upon to depose the tyrant, and all the people turned against the latter. When no hopes were left, he arrayed himself in his splendour, and retiring to his palace, set fire to it and perished, like another Sardanapalus, in the flames. When the conqueror entered, the first object he perceived was the guilty queen, whom he put to death with his own hand, and immediately became the first of the dynasty Chow. This forms the subject of a portion of the 'Shooking,' one of the five classical books delivered down by Confucius. The Chinese have no existing records older than the compilations of Confucius who was nearly contemporary with Herodotus, the father of Grecian history, and to whom Pope has given a very lofty niche in his Temple of Fame :'

"Superior and alone Confucius stood,

Who taught that useful science-to be good." The five classics and the four books, which were bequeathed by that teacher or by his disciples, contain what is now known of the

early traditions or records of the country. The period of authentic history may be considered as dating from the race of Chow, in whose time Confucius himself lived; for, although it might be going too far to condemn all that precedes that period as absolutely fabulous, it is still so much mixed up with fable as hardly to deserve the name of history. In his work called Chun-tsieu (spring and autumn, because written between those seasons) Confucius gives the annals of his own times, and relates the wars of the several petty states against each other. The southern half of the present empire (to the south of the Yangtsekiang) was then in a state of entire barbarism; and the northern half, extending from that river to the confines of Tartary, was divided among a number of petty independent states, derived from a common origin, but engaged in perpetual hostilities with each other.

The period of Chow, comprising above eight centuries, and extending down to 240 B.C., was distinguished, not only by the birth of Confucius, but by the appearance in China of Laou-keun, and, in India of Fo, or Budh, who were destined to give rise to the two sects, which, subordinate to that of Confucius himself, have influenced rather than divided the population of China ever since. The estimation, however, which they have respectively enjoyed has been very different. The memory and the doctrines of Confucius have met with almost uninterrupted veneration to the present time; they have even retained their supremacy over the native worship of the Tartar dynasty; while the absurd superstitions of the other two have been alternately embraced and despised by the different sovereigns of the country. The mummeries of the Budhists are a parallel to the worst parts of Roman Catholicism; and the disciples of Laou-keun combine a variety of superstitions; each sect, at the same time, being plainly a corruption of something that was better in its origin. We shall have to speak of these more in detail hereafter, under the head of Religions.

Confucius was respected by the sovereigns of nearly all the independent states of China, and was employed as minister by one of them. After his death, which happened B.C. 477,

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at the age of seventy-three, a series of sanguinary contests arose among the petty kingdoms, which gave to this period of history the name of Chen-kuo, or the "contending nations," and proved in after-times the ruin of the race of Chow. The king of Tsin had long been growing powerful at the expense of the neighbouring states: he fought against six other nations, and, after a course of successes, compelled them all to acknowledge his supremacy. The chief government began now to assume the aspect of an empire, which comprehended that half of modern China lying to the north of the great Keang; but which, after the lapse of a few centuries, was doomed again to be split into several parts.

The first Emperor (which is implied by the title Chyhoang-ty) being troubled by the incursions of the Tartars on the northern frontier, rendered himself for ever famous by the erection of the vast wall, which has now stood for 2000 years, extending along a space of 1500 miles, from the gulf of Peking to Western Tartary. It has been estimated that this monstrous monument of human labour contains materials sufficient to surround the whole globe, on one of its largest circles, with a wall several feet in height. Another act of the same emperor entitled him to a different species of fame. He ordered that all the books of the learned, including the writings of Confucius, should be cast into the flames; many of course escaped this sentence, through the zeal of those who cultivated learning; but it is said that upwards of 400 persons, who attempted to evade or oppose the order, were burned with the books they wished to save. It is not easy to explain the fantastic wickedness of such an act on any common principles; but one reason alleged for it is, the jealousy that this foolish Emperor entertained of the fame of his progenitors, and the wish he indulged that posterity should hear of none before himself.

About the year 201, B.C., the race of Hân succeeded to the sovereignty, and commenced one of the most celebrated periods of Chinese history. It was now that the Tartars by their predatory warfare became the source of endless disquiet to the more polished and peaceful Chinese, by whom they were in vain propitiated with alliances and tribute.

They were the Hing-kuo (erratic nations), against whom the first emperor had vainly built the wall; and under the name of Heung-noo (Huns) they constantly appear in the histories or fictions of that period. The first emperors of this race endeavoured to make friends of the Tartar chiefs by giving them their daughters in marriage. The

disgrace," says a historian of that period, "could not be exceeded-from this time China lost her honour." In the reign of Yuenty, the ninth emperor, the Tartars having been provoked by the punishment of two of their leaders, who had transgressed the boundaries of the Great Wall in hunting, the empire was again invaded, and a princess demanded and yielded in marriage. This forms the subject of one of the hundred plays of Yuen, an English version of which was printed by the Oriental Translation Committee in 1829, under the name of the 'Sorrows of Hân.' The impolitic system of buying off the barbarians, which commenced so early, terminated many centuries afterwards in the overthrow of the empire.

The seventeenth Emperor of Hân, by name Ho-ty, is said to have had considerable intercourse with the west. It is even recorded that one of his envoys reached Tatsin, or Arabia. It is certain that eunuchs, those fertile sources of trouble to his successors, were introduced during his reign, and it may be inferred that he borrowed them from western Asia, about A.D. 95. The reigns of the last two Emperors of Hân were disturbed by the machinations of the eunuchs, and by the wars with the rebels called Hoangkin, or Yellow Caps. At this time so little was left of the sovereign authority, that the emperors are frequently designated by the mere term Choo, or lord.

The period of the Sankuo, or "Three States," into which the country was divided towards the close of Hân, about A.D. 184, is a favourite subject of the historical plays and romances of the Chinese. A work, designated particularly by the above name, is much prized and very popular among them, and a manuscript translation of it in Latin, by one of the Catholic missionaries, exists in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society. Extracts from it might be made interesting,

but the whole is perhaps too voluminous to bear an English translation in print. It is, however, as little stuffed with extravagancies as could be expected from an oriental history, and, except that it is in prose, bears a resemblance in some of its features to the Iliad, especially in what Lord Chesterfield calls "the porter-like language of the heroes. These heroes excel all moderns in strength and prowess, and make exchanges after the fashion of Glaucus and Diomed, Hector and Ajax. One shows his liberality in horses, another in a weight of silver, or iron :—

"And steel well-tempered, and refulgent gold." Society seems to have been in much the same state, split into something like feudal principalities, hanging loosely together under the questionable authority of one head. That great step in civilization, the invention of printing (which arose in China about the tenth century of our era), had not yet taken place, and even the manufacture of paper had not long been introduced.

The leader of Wei, one of the three states, having at length obtained the sovereignty, established the capital in his own country, Honân, and commenced the dynasty called Tsin, A.D. 260. Having taken warning from the distractions arising from the interference of eunuchs and women in affairs of government during the period of the three states, a kind of Salic law was passed, that "Queens should not reign, nor assist in public matters"-a good law, adds the historian, and worthy of being an example: it was, however, soon afterwards abrogated in practice. It has been concluded, not without probability, that the name China, Sina, or Tsina, was taken from the dynasty of Tsin. The first emperor, or founder, is said to have had political transactions with Fergana, a province of Sogdiana, and to have received a Roman embassy.

On the conclusion of this race of sovereigns, in A.D. 416, China became divided into two principal kingdoms, Nanking being the capital of the southern one, and Honân of the northern. For about 200 years afterwards, five successive races (woo-tae) rapidly followed each other, and the salutary rule of hereditary succession being constantly violated