he had knocked at the door for me, I being un- | chapel, to knock nails every year into the altars willing to trouble the religious man with a second throughout the country, and to lay their rules guest, who was neither poor nor a stranger in the land. A female of pleasurable aspect opened the door, and complimented me on my facility in the language, and examined my dress not less attentively with her hands than her eyes. Her master heard her, and cried "What the devil does that fellow want?" looking at me all the while. "I am come," said I," to break bread with thee, O minister of Christ!" "Thee!" cried he, with anger and disdain: for in England and France every man must be addressed as four or five; in other parts of Europe, as a young lady. He took me violently by the collar and threw me out of the house; and a few minutes afterward a more civil person came up to me, desiring me to follow him, and to answer for myself before a justice of the peace. My heart again bounded: what delightful words, justice! peace! I told him I had no complaint to make. "Come along," said he; and I rejoiced at his earnestness. I was brought before a member of parliament, whose father (I heard) was as famous for flogging boys, as the member is for torturing men. He heard me without deigning to answer; and said to my conductor, "Take the fellow to the treadmill." I do not regret my inability to give an account of this place, since it appears to be a place of punishment. At the door I met my captain, who was introducing another inmate for theft. He asked me what I was doing there. I replied that I believed I was about to have the honour of dining there with a member of the church, and a member of the parliament; the dignity of the latter having been imparted to me on the road. After some explanation from me in the presence of the miller, he prevailed on that worthy tradesman to allow me a chair in his parlour, and, in about an hour, returned with an elderly man, also a member of parliament, who heard me in my defence, and laughed heartily. In fine, I was constrained to order my dinner in another place, having first thanked the captain, and expressed a wish that we might meet again. "Not here, I hope, Mr. Tsing-Ti!" said my friend: "I like dancing upon my own deck better than upon yon fellow's." He shook my hand, and went away: I never saw him after. Emperor. I wonder the King of England does not introduce a few specimens of better precepts and better religions. If he has never heard of ours, and those of Thibet, there are some very excellent in his own dominions of India. Tsing-Ti. The people about his late majesty frightened him; telling him that, if he pulled down an altar at the extremity of his kingdom, his throne would fall at the same moment, and that he would fracture a thigh at the least. This was whispered to me; so was what shall follow. Being corpulent, as becomes his station, he greatly dreaded a broken thigh, and paid several carpenters, whom he maintained in an old stoutly, and occasionally their hammers, on the backs of those people who would over-curiously try whether the said altars are upright, and what timber they are made of. The carpenters are at once the greatest chatterers and the greatest rogues in the whole community, and enjoy the privilege of exemption from the payment of their debts. : Emperor. From what province are they? Tsing-Ti. From all every city sends to the old chapel, for the king's service, those whom the citizens are afraid to trust for mutton and beef, or to leave too near their wives and daughters, making each one promise he will furnish them with nails and chips, and little reflecting that for every nail they must give an iron-mine, and for every chip a forest. At last the king's majesty chose a proper fellow to superintend his business. A clamorous old ringleader, who worked upstairs, was desired to walk down. He begged, with tears in his eyes, permission to stay half an hour longer, and spent it in picking up pins on the floor. Unbending his back from this laborious function, he groaned heavily, went home, and prevailed on his wife, after a long entreaty, to promise him two sheep-tails to sit upon, as he had been used to a cushion of wool. His wife bought only one sheep-tail, apprising him that, cutting it cleverly through the middle, it would serve the purpose of two. He threw up his eyes to heaven, and thanked God for inspiring her to save the family from ruin, when his thoughts were distracted by his tribulations. Carpenters, who formerly were criers in the courts, were clamorous in their assembly. An old soldier walked among them with the look of an eagle he made no reply, but (it is reported) he opened a drawer, and showed them a Peruvian glue, admirable for sticking lips together: the very sight of it draws them close. He has promised to all those who work under him a continuance of their wages, but threatens the refractory with dismissal. Emperor. I fancied the English were intractable and courageous. Tsing-Ti. To others. Dogs know that dogs have sharp teeth, and that calves have flat ones. The man who has the purse in his own fist, has the sword in his servant's. Emperor. Proverbs, O Tsing-Ti! prove one man wise, but rarely make another so. Experience, adversity, and affliction, impress divine lessons deeply. Tsing-Ti. Then the English are the most learned people upon earth. Those they have conquered leave the table of the conquerors without bread and salt upon it; those they have protected strip off them the last shirt; and, while they sit and scratch their shoulders, they agree to praise in letters of gold, and on monuments of marble, the wisdom of such as misguided, and the integrity of such as ruined them. SIXTH AUDIENCE. Emperor. I am curious of any fresh and certain information, about a country which appears to be separated from others more widely in character than in locality. May we not surmise, that a fragment of a star hath dropped, with two or three of its inhabitants, on this part of our globe? Tsing-Ti. Highly probable. Even yet there appears a strange disinclination in the English to associate with those of other regions. Their neighbours meet a foreigner with a smile and a salutation the English withdraw from him staring and frowning, as if the fright of the fall were recent, and the intent of the stranger worse than uncertain. The rest of the Europeans give indications of good will or good manners, by an embrace, or an interchange of the hand, or by insertion of their noses into that portion of the hair which grows between the ear and the chin, and which, being to them what the interior of the tail is to dogs, they nourish for that purpose. You must bruise an Englishman's face into the figure and dimensions of a football, ere he can discern to his satisfaction that he ought to recognise you as a friend. To this obliquity and perversity I must attribute it, that every ordinance of Jesus Christ hath been cast aside by him, having first ascertained the fact, that every one hath been thus rejected, on the authority of a public preacher. He sat in a sort of tub or barrel, over which was suspended by a chain (not without some support from the hinder part of the barrel) the cover of a wine-press, at the height of about two feet above his head. He smiled at his auditors; called them his brothers, though there were before him more of the female sex than of the male; and assured them that, according to the Book of Glad Tidings, the greater part of them must inevitably go to the devil, and gnash their teeth eternally. Upon which, he and his audience began to sing and ogle; and I saw among them several sets of teeth which I thought too pretty for their destination; and several mouths, on the contrary, which never could pay the penalty denounced. A young person sat beside me beating time, but beating it where it was impossible she should hear it, and seeming to provoke an accompaniment. A sallow man under the preacher, a man with watery eyes, not unlike a duck's in form and colour, and with nostrils opening and shutting, and with a mouth semicircular in front, and drawn upward at the corners, caught me by the elbow as I left the temple, and told me the labourer was worthy of his hire. I did not comprehend his meaning, and perhaps might have stared at him for an explanation, when an agriculturist came up between us, to whom I bowed, and said, "He means you." The agriculturist made me no answer, but said to the other, "He looks like a Dutch sailor in his holiday suit." And turning to me, "Master, I say, tip him five shillings: he comes but once a quarter, and damns the parish, he and his parson, at a reasonable rate." Then winking, " If you sleep at the Green Dragon, he will see that your bed is warmed to your wish, and sing you a stave at the opening of the service." In fact, such was the good man's gratitude, he brought me his daughter at dusk; which is often done in London, although not so often, we may suppose, as in the time of the Christians. I wish the young woman had profited by the father's example, and had rather asked for money than run off with it. The love of the generous man expands and displays itself in the sunshine of his liberality; the love of the wise man reposes in the shade of his discretion. Neither of these was left to my choice; and, O Emperor! friend of my youth! I lost at once my money, my watch, and my silk trousers. Emperor. I can hail and rain and overflood with money; watches I have many as stars are in the firmament; and with silk I can array the earth, and cover the billows of the ocean. Money take thou from my coffers with both hands. Take forty-four robes from my closet, called the closet of ambergris, all worn by the members of my imperial house, some by the bravest and most ancient of our ancestors, and many flowered with verses and proverbs. Take likewise what watches thou needest and approvest, from the wall of any edifice in my gardens, in most of which there are hundreds to relieve the tiresomeness we suffer from the rude obstreperance of the birds in spring. Tsing-Ti. O Emperor! friend of my youth! one watch suffices, and be it any one plain and good. In the vestments I would make a selection; not taking what the bravest or most ancient of our Emperors have sanctified, nor much regarding the literature impressed on them, which I am afraid the moths may have divided into somewhat too minute paragraphs, and dramatised with unnecessary interjections. Emperor. Thou shalt then have forty-four newer: twenty-two of them flowered with gold, sixteen hung with pearls, and six interwoven with my father's verses. Tsing-Ti. These six will never wear out: the others too will preserve through many ages the odour of my gratitude, and the richer fragrance of my prince's love. Emperor. It is much to be regretted that the better religion of the English was little durable. Tsing-Ti. Religions, like teas, suffer by passing the salt water. Emperor. Kong-Fu-Tsi wrote not this. Emperor. Write it thou on the blank leaf at the termination of his sayings, in that copy which my ancestor, Chow-Hi, of blessed memory, bought at the expense of a rice-ground in WongWa, and of the tea-cup called Chang-Chang, transparent and thin as a white rose-leaf, though a soldier's span in diameter, and little short of a lawyer's; and so smooth, that (it is written in our chronicles) flies have broken their legs in attempting to climb it. Tsing-Ti. They must have been young ones, or very decrepit. Emperor. The chronicles of my ancestors do not commemorate that particular, nor offer a conjecture at their ages. Tsing-Ti. History is much improved of late, and chiefly by the sedulity of the English. In England we should have known all about it, to a day, and some duels would have been fought, and many calumnies and curses dealt reciprocally in the outset. For although their denominations in hostility are much longer and much more ponderous than ours, they cast them with great dexterity and velocity. The English historians are double-handed. Emperor. So are ours. Tsing-Ti. But theirs keep one hand for history, the other for controversy; the one being blackened with ink, the other with gunpowder. Their favourite words anciently were saint and hero; the present in fashion are rogue and rebel. One of their kings ordered the bones of his father's enemies to be disinterred, long after their burial. This monarch seems to unite more suffrages from the modern historians than any other, and their works relating to his reign are enriched with more sermons, and pleadings, and opinions of counsel, and depositions of witnesses. Emperor. Such histories, with their depositions, must be as unsavoury as the oldest street in Canton; and, with their sermons and pleadings and opinions, must be equally long and crooked. Tsing-Ti. The English, like the ants, follow one another in a regular line, through wet and dry, their leaders choosing in preference those places which have a pungent odour. Emperor. Nay, nay, Tsing-Ti! thou dislikest them for disappointing thee in thy favourite religion. quitted my native land: I return to my native land, and am a Christian. My tears fell abundantly, genially, sweetly, on first reading the sermon of the blessed Teacher to his disciples. How I wished to press my brow upon the herbs below him, in the midst of that faithful and fraternal multitude! How I wished to humble it, even unto the insects, and so quiet my heart for ever by its just abasement! When I had resided a short time in England, I began to suspect that some few sentences were interpolated by Act of Parliament; such as, "If any man will sue thee at law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." And again, speaking of prisons, "Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." I saw several poor soldiers in the streets, who had been in Egypt about the time (I suspect) when Christianity was breathing her last. They were holy men, but somewhat more addicted to the ancient part of the Bible than to the newer, calling often upon God to confound and damn this person and that. However they had observed with punctuality the hardest of the more recent commandments; which is, "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be And if thy right hand offend thee, cut cast into hell. it off and cast it from thee." The precept is plain; the reasons, I imagine, are parliamentary. However, there were many who thought them quite sufficient, and who not only cut off the hand but the arm likewise. Wonderful in how short a time so complete a change was effected! I myself did not aim precipitately at this Tsing-Ti. Certainly I do not like them the perfection, but, in order to be well received in better for it but I love my country and my em- the country, I greatly wished the favour of a peror the more when I return and see the tolera- blow on the right cheek. Unfortunately I got tion of every sect and creed. What a strange several on the left before I succeeded. At last I institution is prevalent in Europe! Christianity was so happy as to make the acquisition of a most is known and confessed to be so excellent and hearty cuff under the socket of the right eye, divine a thing, that no man is permitted at once giving me all those vague colours which we Chito be a Christian and to call himself so. He nese reduce into regular features, or into strange may take which division he likes: he may practise postures of the body, by means of glasses. As the ordinances of Christ without assuming the soon as I knew positively whether my head was name, or he may assume the name on condition remaining on my neck or not, I turned my left that he abstain from the ordinances. However, cheek for the testimony of my faith. The assailit is whispered that several whole families are ant cursed me and kicked me; the by-standers, privileged, and neither deny that they are Chris- instead of calling me Christian, called me Turk tians, nor abstain with any rigour from the duties and Malay; and, instead of humble and modest, enjoined. I was but a year in the country: I say the most impudent dog and devil they had ever only what I have heard. Often that which is set eyes upon. I fell on my knees, and praised beautiful at a distance, loses its effect as we ap- God, since at last I had been admitted into so proach it. The cloud whereon the departing sun pure and pious a country, that even this action pours his treasures, which he invests with purple was deemed arrogant and immodest. Seeing a and gold, and appears to leave as a representative Jew on my return (as I soon found he was) who not unworthy of himself, fills us with gladness, had several things to sell, I asked of him whether pure and chastened, from the horizon; but is the he had any medicine good for the contusion of my mountain it hath rested on less dreary and less cheek-bone. sterile the day after? I was a Christian when I "Come along with me," said he. within the walls of Rome. Persecution has not shaken us nor our fathers: we hold fast by their robes, and are burnt or stoned together." The wife lifted up her hands, and said nothing: but a boy, about five years old, seeing her hands lifted up, knelt under them and asked her blessing: she gave it, shedding tears over him. The husband too himself was moved; for nothing rouses the soul like another's patient suffering. He likewise was moved; but less with tenderness than indignation. "They have burned, yes," cried he, "they have burned even such as thou art, O my Abel!" Here he entered into historical facts, so horrible and atrocious, that the princes of Europe thought it expedient to unite, and to exert their utmost authority, in order that two of the perpetrators might be kept on their thrones, against the reclamation of their subjects; these two having repeatedly committed perjury, and repeatedly attempted parricide. We entered an alley; he unlocked a door in the narrowest part of it, and conducted me to the summit of the house. His wife and children ran out to meet him; and a little girl had caught him by the hand before any of the party saw that a stranger was behind; for the stairs were narrow and dark. The exuberance of pleasure was repressed. The little girl did not loose her father's hand, nor did the mother draw her back, although she held her by the arm. The little girl looked steadfastly at me, and then loosed her father's hand, and turned her back toward me, and placed her finger, I conjecture, to her eye. But the mother was excusing her dress, and her ignorance how to receive such a personage, when the child, impatient that her signs were ineffectual, cried, "O mother! can not you see how he is bruised?" The words had scarcely escaped her lips, before the father brought a white liquid in a teacup, and said calmly, "Rachel ! put down your hands from above your head, and neither grieve nor wonder, but help." I imagine I had been detained on the outside of the door, until several things were re-sisted them! moved from the crowded and small apartment, in Tsing-Ti. All, all: never were they unanimous which the air had by no means all the benefit it might have had from its elevation. When I entered it and came fully into the light, every face, excepting the husband's, expressed the most tender pity. Rachel had scarcely touched me with the cooling remedy, ere she said she was sure she hurt me. The little girl said to me, "let me do it," and "It does not hurt at all. See! I have put some on the same place in my own cheek," and then whispered in the mother's ear, can not you encourage him better? does he cry?" Then escaped me those words, O my Emperor and friend! those which never before fell from me, and which I do believe are original, "Yes, a wise man may marry." The husband did not confine his inquiries to the cause of what he called the quarrel; and on my saying that I never could have expected so little of commiseration, so little of assistance, from Christians, "Why not," cried he abruptly. "Are Turks more cruel?" "I can not speak of the Turks," said I, "but I could wish that so pure and so pious a sect as the Christians were humaner." I then began to ask questions in my turn; certainly not, whether he was among the professing or the acting; but how long ago it was forbidden that the same person should be both? He began to feel my head, unceremoniously, in places where there were no bruises, and thought it would be better for me to lose a little blood, as an ugly blow might be unlucky to the brain. The wife made signs to him, but could not stop him; and her anxiety that he should desist, only urged him to explain and defend himself. The little girl slipped away! "We children of Abraham," said he, " have our law and keep it; while every year some new fungus, whiter or blacker, more innocent or more poisonous, springs from the scatterings of the old dunghill, forked up and littered and trimmed Emperor. And the other kings aided and as before. These kings, it is reported, are of different sects; yet they most formally agreed, and most solemnly protested, that parricide and perjury are legitimate in princes. In England there are some who doubt it, but they are deemed shallow and insufficient; and though indeed they think more rigidly than the rest, they are called free-thinkers. Emperor. High compliment! Tsing-Ti. Far otherwise in the opinion of the people; the word liberal is the only word more odious. Emperor. Tsing-Ti! Tsing-Ti! art thou quite sure that this contusion may not have jolted and confounded and estranged thy memory? for, although men change their religion, or lose their principles, a reminiscence of right and wrong must remain. That any should voluntarily lay impediments on the operation of their minds, is really incredible; that they should hate you for smoothening the way before them, and for leaving it open, can only be attributed to the worst depravity, or to insanity the most irremediable. Tsing-Ti. Things less enormous may be more easily forgotten. The blow on my cheek-bone rather improved than impaired my memory: at least supplying it with another fact for its storehouse. Emperor. I would more willingly hear again of the Jew than of the princes: he seems much honester and much wiser. The distance in rank between us is the same, therefore the same would be my sympathy with them as with him, if they deserved it. I can, however, show no countenance to such execrable wretches as those who not only held alliance with perjurers and parricides, but who abstained from bringing them to punishment. Indifferent and heedless am I what religion they profess or hold. Some is requisite; since imbecile men (and such are those princes) can only learn morality under the rod of fear. Tsing-Ti. The English treat theirs as the Malays we see in China treat their serpents, first drawing their teeth, then teaching them to dance to one certain tune. But these serpents, when ever they get loose, make off toward other serpents and join them, forgetting the wrist and tabor, and preferring any holes and brambles to the level well-brushed ground upon which they received their education. When I pressed the Jew to join me and become a Christian, he declared he had no aversion to the precepts of Christ, who had given a strong testimony for his nation. apostles taught not only the justice but the necessity of enjoying all things in common: and those who disobeyed, were declared guilty of the crime against the Holy Ghost. Emperor. In the name of wonder, what crime can that be? Tsing-Ti. One indeed not very clear in its nature, but manifest enough in its effects. Those who sinned against it were instantly stricken dead, particularly in that said article concerning the community of goods. No other crime whatever was punished so summarily, or with such severity, as the holding back a particle of property. And yet perhaps the warier might reasonably have had some scruples and perplexities about it, seeing that one Judas Iscariot, a special knave, who betrayed the Teacher to crucifixion, had been the treasurer.* "I am sorry that, by the laws of the land," said he, " so humane and devoted a creature was condemned to death. But the laws of our land, in this instance, were not more rigorous than the Women were forbidden to attend the churches laws of others. The public men endured him in fine clothes. The women of England, at the longer than the public men of any other country present day, turn up their noses at anyone who in the world would endure one who excited so does not put on her best upon the Sunday; pertinaciously the populace against them. Scribes, and the principal part of the service seems to publicans, pharisees, are for ever in his mouth, be a most rigid examination how far this necesmixed with much bitterness. What government sary compliment is paid to the anti-christian could go on regularly and securely in the midst priest. of mobs and invectives? Yet he received for many years far less molestation than he gave. These scribes, these publicans, these pharisees, were the richest, the most powerful, and the most enlightened men in the country. Call the judges, and the bishops, and the secretaries of state in England, by such names; point them out for hatred, for abhorrence, for indignation, in the same manner; and your personal liberty, instead of remaining three or four years, would not be left you, my friend, so many mornings." This is true; and I attempted to evade it: for, though many men like truth, there is always something they like better. Victory is so sweet a thing, we not only shed words but blood for it; just as the wild men did in the first ages on record. "Where!" cried I, with an air of triumph (for an escape is often one)," where does Jesus Christ bear testimony in your favour? he often bears it against you." He replied calmly, "In these plain words: 'Think not I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill: for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.'' He confounded me: I thanked him and his wife for their courtesy, and, not knowing what to do with my fingers, wrapped up in a piece of coarse paper a ring, taken from my little one, and requested the good Rachel to give the contents to her daughter, when she happened to have a cough. I escaped the formulary of acceptance or refusal which she might have employed had she discovered them. Every day showed me the vestiges of a religion in ruins. The Teacher and his disciples and The Teacher orders men to pray little, and in private.+ One who had persecuted him, and afterward came over to his party, one Saul or Paul, could not in his conscience let him have his own way in everything, and told people to pray publicly. The day of my arrival in London, I wished to accommodate myself to the habits of the nation, and having read in my Bible," If any be merry, let him sing Psalms," and thinking that a peculiarity of pronunciation is disguised more easily in singing than in talking, I began to sing Psalms through the streets. The populace pelted me; the women cried, "scandalous!" the boys, "let us have some fun!" and proof was made upon me with many eggs, even after I had declared I could perform no miracles with them, and had plainly proved I could neither catch one in my mouth, nor restore to life the chicken that had long ago died within it. An anti-christian priest of great austerity, with legs like a flamingo's, asked me whether I was not ashamed of my profaneness, in singing Psalms along the public walks? Another, who was called his chaplain, and rode with him in his coach, cried, My lord, drive on! Coachman, drive on! Send the son of a . . . . to Bedlam." Extensive as are the commercial relations of the English, I was astonished that a chaplain, which means the priest that prays for another (none of consideration performing for himself so menial an office), should (never having visited China) have known so much of my mother, and should designate by so coarse an appellation the concubine of a prince. After a time, I acquired the intelligence, that no woman in England is exempt from it who forms an alliance, unsanctioned by marriage, with any except the king. 1 John, xii. 66 Matthew, v. 6. |