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at the grave, and then a family meeting at a social feast, with a few simple prostrations and petitions. No bacchanalian companies of men and women run riot over the hills, as in the Eleusinian mysteries, nor are obscene rites practised in the house; all is pleasant, decorous, and harmonious, the junior members of the family coming from a distance, sometimes two or three hundred miles, to observe it, and the family meeting on this occasion is looked forward to by all with much the same feelings that Christmas is in Old England, or Thanksgiving in New England. Brothers and sisters, cousins and friends, join in the worship and the feast, and it is this intimate and pleasant reunion of dear ones, perhaps the most favorable to the cementing of family affection to be found in heathen society, which constitutes its power, and will present such an obstacle to the reception of the gospel, and removal of the "two divinities" from the house.

The funeral ceremonies here described are performed by children for their parents, especially for the father; but there are few or no ceremonies and little expense, for infants, unmarried children, concubines, or slaves. These are coffined and buried without parade in the family sepulchre; the poor sometimes tie them up in mats and boards, and lay them in the fields, to shock the eyes and noses of all who pass. The municipal authorities of Canton issued orders to the people in 1832, to bring such bodies as had no place of burial to the potter's field, where they would be interred at public expense; and societies exist in all the large cities, whose object is to bury poor people. In some parts the body is wrapped in cloth or coffined, and laid in graveyards on the surface of the ground; but a more common disposition of the poor dead is to erect buildings for receiving the coffins, where they remain many years. Few acts, during the late war, irritated the people about Canton against the English more than forcing open the coffins found in these mausolea, and mutilating the corpses. One building near the city walls contained hundreds of coffins, from which, when opened, a pungent aromatic smell was perceptible, and the features presented a dried appearOne of the Romish missionaries tells a story of his guide, when he was conducting him over the hills in Hupeh, ordering him to conceal his blue eyes, by putting on green spectacles, as they were approaching some houses, and describes his surprise at finding them all filled with coffins arranged in an orderly man

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ner. Graves are seldom inclosed by a fence, cattle pasture among them, and paths lead over and through them.

Epitaphs are very simple, merely stating what dynasty reigns, where the deceased was born, what generation of the family he belonged to, and his ancestral name. Dr. Medhurst describes some square, dome-covered tombs in Shantung like topes, destitute of inscription, but very solidly built. He also noticed one stone in that province, bearing an epitaph to the memory of a faithful wife by a sorrowing husband. Laudatory expressions are very rare on Chinese tombstones, nor are quotations from the classics, or stanzas of poetry, introduced to convey a sentiment. The corpses of officers who die at their stations are carried to their paternal tombs, sometimes at the public expense, and the emperor, in some instances, orders all the funeral rites of distinguished statesmen to be defrayed out of the treasury; this was done during the late war, in the cases of commissioner Yukien, and General Hailing, who burned himself at Chinkiang fu.

Besides these funeral rites and religious ceremonies to their departed ancestors, the Chinese have an almost infinite variety of superstitious practices, most of which are of a deprecatory rather than intercessory character, growing out of their belief in demons and genii, who trouble or help people. It may be said that most of the religious acts of the Chinese, especially those performed in temples, are intended to avert misfortune rather than supplicate blessings. In order to ward off malignant influences, amulets are worn and charms hung up, by persons of all ranks. Among the latter are money-swords, made of coins of different monarchs strung together in the form of a dagger; and leaves of the sweet-flag (Acorus) and Artemisia tied in a bundle, or a sprig of peach-blossoms; the first is placed near beds, the latter over the lintel, to drive away demons. A man also collects a cash or two from each of his friends, and gets a lock made, which he hangs to his son's neck in order to lock him to life, and make the subscribers surety for his safety; adult females also wear a neck lock for the same purpose. Charms are common. One bears the inscription, "May you get the three manys and the nine likes ;" another, "To obtain long eye-browed longevity." The three manys are, many years of happiness and life, and many sons. Old brass mirrors to cure mad people, are hung up by the rich in their halls, and figures or representations of the

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unicorn, of gourds, tiger's claws, or the eight diagrams, are worn to insure good fortune or ward off sickness, fire, or fright. Stones, or pieces of metal, with short sentences cut upon them, are almost always found suspended or tied about the persons of children and women, which are supposed to have great efficacy in preventing evil. The rich pay large sums for rare objects to promote this end.

Besides their employment in the worship and burial of the dead, and cultivation of glebe lands, the priests of both sects resort to many expedients to increase their incomes, few of which have the improvement of their countrymen as a ruling motive. Some go around the streets collecting printed or written paper in baskets, to burn them, lest the venerable names of Confucius or Budha be defiled; others obtain a few pennies by writing inscriptions and charms on doors; and many turn beggars or thieves.

The Budhists issue small books, called Girdle Classics, containing prayers addressed to the deity under whose protection the person has placed himself. Spells are made in great variety, some of them to be worn or pasted up in the house, and others are written on leaves, paper, or cloth, and burned, and their ashes thrown into a liquid for the patient or child to drink. These spells are sold by Rationalists to their votaries, and usually consist of characters, like fuh (happiness), or shau (longevity), fancifully combined. The god of doors, of the North Pole, Pwanku, the heavenly astronomer, the god of thunder and lightning, of tyfoons, the god of medicine, demigods and genii of almost every name and power, are all invoked, and some of them by all persons. In shops, the mere word shin, æon or genius, is put up in a shrine, and incense placed before it, all objects of fear and worship being included under this general term. The threshold is peculiarly sacred, and incense-sticks are lighted morning and evening at its side.

The Chinese have great dread of wandering and hungry demons and ghosts of departed wicked men, and the Budhists are hired to celebrate a mass called ta tsiau, to appease these disturbers of human happiness, which, in its general purport, corresponds to All-Souls' day among the Romanists, and from its splendor and the general interest taken in its success, is very popular. The priests and shopmen manage the preliminaries. The streets are covered with canvas awnings, and festoons of cheap silk, of brilliant colors, are hung across and along the streets. Chandeliers of glass are suspended at short intervals, alternating with small trays, on which paper figures in various attitudes, intended to illustrate some well known scene in history, amuse the spectators. At night, the glare of a thousand lamps shining through myriads of lustres, lights up the whole scene in a gorgeous manner. The priests erect a staging somewhere in the vicinity, for the rehearsal of prayers to Yen wang or Pluto, and display tables covered with eatables for the hungry ghosts to feed on. Their acolytes mark the time when the half-starved ghosts, who have no children or friends to care for them, rush in and shoulder the viands, which they carry off for their year's supply. Bands of music chime in from time to time, to refresh these hungry sprites with the dulcet tones they once heard, for the Chinese, judging their gods by themselves, provide what is pleasing to

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those who pay for the entertainment, as well as to those who are supposed to be benefited by it. After the services are performed, the crowd are allowed to rush in, and carry off what is left from the spiritual feast, but when this is permitted, the priests sometimes cheat them with merely a cover of food on the tops of the baskets, the bottoms being filled with shavings.

There is another festival in August, connected with this, called shau í, or “burning clothes," at which pieces of paper folded in the form of jackets, trousers, gowns, and other garments, are burned for the use of the suffering ghosts, besides a large quantity of paper money. Paper houses with proper furniture, and puppets to represent household servants, are likewise made; and Medhurst adds, "that writings are drawn up and signed in the presence of witnesses, to certify the conveyance of the property, stipulating that on its arrival in hades it shall be duly made over to the individuals specified in the bond; the houses, servants, clothes, money and all, are then burned with the bond, the worshippers feeling confident that their friends obtain the benefit of what they have sent them." Thus "they make a covenant with the grave, and with hell they are at agreement.' This festival, like all others, is attended with feasting and music. In order still further to provide for childless ghosts, their ancestral tablets are collected in temples, and placed together in a room set apart for the purpose, called wu sz' tan, or "orbate temple," and a man hired to attend and burn incense before them. The feelings which arise on going into a room of this sort, and seeing one or two hundred small wooden tablets standing in regular array, and knowing that each one, or each pair, is like the silent tombstone of an extinct family, are such as no hall full of staring idols can ever inspire. The tablets look old, discolored, and broken, covered with dust and black with smoke, so that the gilded characters are obscured, and one cannot behold them long in their silence and forgetfulness, without almost feeling as if spirits still hovered around them. All these ghosts are supposed to be propitiated by the sacrifices on All-Souls' day.

The patronage given to idolatry and superstition is constant and general among all classes, and thousands of persons get their livelihood by shrewdly availing themselves of the fears of their countrymen. Special efforts are made from time to time to build or repair a temple or pagoda, in order to insure or recall prospe