taken place. Respect for the past and superstition would have ruled supreme amongst us, just as we see them still when decay begins its work of destruction in the social body, and men do not think that it is even possible to amend the present. I may be mistaken, but when I look at Apollonius the sage, with his everlasting maxims, the foolish Damis, and Philostratus the rhetorician, and all those emperors and empresses who, in the quietness of their domestic circles, decide how the world is to be restored to virtue—when I look at all those councils of women, and men of letters, and others well versed in the ritualisms of the age, I seem to have before me a picture of Chinese life with all its most characteristic traits. They wish to appear as though they were in earnest, they wish to look imposing, but they are simply absurd. They determine upon the regeneration of the world, and an Elagabalus tries to carry it out. Great show is made of vast learning and profound acquaintance with science, and the Caucasus is mentioned as a river when it is not thought to be a mountain by which
