pied in England, in order to indulge the locomotive propensity of the inhabitants, and to enable them to move, with ease and expedition, from one place to another. This expenditure of the energies of the soil, in feeding millions of horses, and this laying out of good ground, in constructing several thousand miles of road, is almost entirely spared in China, where the public are content to walk, or to carry each other about, if they may but get enough to eat and to wear.
It has been objected to the statement regarding the occupancy of a great proportion of the land in tillage, that the cemeteries of the Chinese are both numerous and extensive; and much of the soil being consecrated to the service of the dead, there must of necessity be a smaller quantity left for the support of the living. The force of this objection seems to be heightened by the consideration, that the Chinese never allow old graves to be disturbed; and, generally speaking, dig a new pit for each individual. But, an acquaintance with the fact, obviates the supposed difficulty; for, the Chinese seldom select, for burial places, situations capable of agricultural use and improvement; and inter their deceased friends on the hill side, or under the craggy precipice, where little else could be made of the soil. During the various excursions, which the writer has made into the interior, along the shores of three or four maritime provinces, he was particularly struck with the extreme paucity of graves. In one part of the province of Shan-tung, a cemetery was discovered in a sequestered glen; and, here and there, a white monument presented itself by the road side; but by no means equal to the hosts of living inhabitants everywhere
