teristic of the age we live in. Railways, tunnels, machinery, and all the ramifications and operations of gas and steam, are not to be looked for in China. With these exceptions, however, China possesses as much civilization as Turkey now, or England a few centuries ago. Indeed, were the question proposed to a Chinese, as to which he considered the most civilized nation, while he might acknowledge the superiority of Europeans in cunning and force, he would not scruple to claim for his own countrymen the praise of a superior polish. They denominate China, "the flowery nation,"—"the region of eternal summer,"—"the land of the sages,"—"the celestial empire,"—while they unscrupulously term all foreigners "barbarians," and sometimes load them with epithets still more degrading and contemptuous, such as swine, monkeys, and devils.
The soliloquy of one of them is rather amusing; "I felicitate myself," says Tëen Ke-shih, "that I was born in China; and constantly think how very different it would have been with me, if born beyond the seas, in some remote part of the earth, where the people, deprived of the converting maxims of the ancient kings, and ignorant of the domestic relations, are clothed with the leaves of plants, eat wood, dwell in the wilderness, and live in the holes of the earth; though living in this world in such a condition, I should not have been different from the beasts of the field. But now, happily, I have been born in the middle kingdom. I have a house to live in; have food, drink, and elegant furniture; clothing, caps, and infinite blessings; truly the highest felicity is mine!"
The Chinese have a proverb, that he who judges
