assortment of very old wine-skins. Thanks to the instinctive conservatism of the Chinese nature, very little of the new wine has thus far been accepted, and, for that little, new bottles are in course of preparation.
The present attitude of China towards the lands of the West is an attitude of procrastination. There is on the one hand small desire for that which is new, and upon the other no desire at all, or even willingness, to give up the old. As we see ancient mud huts, that ought long ago to have reverted to their native earth, shored up with clumsy mud pillars which but postpone the inevitable fall, so we behold old customs, old superstitions, and old faiths now outworn, propped up and made to do the same duty as heretofore. "If the old does not go, the new does not come," we are told, and not without truth. The process of change from the one to the other may long be resisted, and may then come about suddenly.
At a time when it was first proposed to introduce telegraphs, the Governor-General of a maritime province reported to the Emperor that the hostility of the people to the innovation was so great that the wires could not be put up. But when war with France was imminent, and the construction of the line was placed upon an entirely different basis, the provincial authorities promptly set up the telegraph posts, and saw that they were respected.
Not many years ago the superstition of fêng-shui was believed by many to be an almost insuperable obstacle to the introduction of railways in China. The very first short line, constructed as an outlet for the K'ai-p'ing coal mines, passed through a large Chinese cemetery, the graves being removed to make way for it, as they would have been in England or in France. A single inspection of that bisected graveyard was sufficient to produce the conviction that fêng-shui could never stand before an engine, when the issue is narrowed down to a trial of strength between "wind-water" and steam. The
