344 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. extraordinary customs, the great towns thronged with inhabitants, industrious, cultivated, and literary; the artificial canals connecting one province with another ; the wonders performed in agriculture ; the system of government, at once so complete and pliant, all could not but be sources of profound astonishment to the dwellers in the West, since all that the celebrated Ve- netian describes is at once so prodigious, so incredible, and vet so remarkable for its exactitude and truth. During the whole of our long residence in the ex- treme East, we studied the Celestial Empire with the greatest minuteness ; since our return we have read the account of Marco Polo's journey, and there, in the pages written six centuries ago, we find reproduced the character and habits of the very men among whom we spent so many years ! And yet since the account was put together, though these people have been shaken by long, frequent, and fierce revolutions, they have nevertheless invariably preserved their own individual characteristics, that stamp which distinguishes them from all other nations. The Chinese of the ninth century, so well described by Arab writers, are the same as those that Marco Polo speaks of in the thirteenth, although they were then under the dominion of the Mongol Tartars. Further on, in the sixteenth century, the Portuguese, doubling the Cape of Good Hope by sea, discover China, and recognise the people that the celebrated traveller had already made known in Europe. And now, in our time, when we visit the " Central Empire," we again meet the same Chinese which were described by the Arabs, by Marco. Polo, and by the Portuguese. Marco Polo's account, although received with dis- belief when published, now enjoys the utmost favour.
