and obey your parents,” is the fundamental commandment of their moral system,—and to say or do anything against it, is as shocking and disgusting to their feelings as blasphemy to those of a Christian. “The practice of infanticide,” says Mr Meadows, speaking of Canton, “exists here, as the bodies of infants floating occasionally on the river sufficiently prove; but it may be fairly doubted whether there is much more of it than in England,” where the crime is punished with death, and where, of course, every means is taken to conceal it; “and often having remarked instances of _deformed female_ children being treated with constant and evident affection by their parents, I am inclined to believe that when infants are put to death, it is solely because their parents are altogether unable to support them.” And Mr Lay says, that the _rare_ occurrence of dead bodies of children being found in the Canton river “proves that, among a swarming population of indigent people, such deeds are none of their customary doings.” The Chinese are a cheerful light-hearted race, well trained to social duties, and with no proclivity to the melancholy of the southern nations of Europe, or to the John-Bull tendency towards reserve and isolation. Social feeling—or good-humour, mildness of disposition, and a good-natured propensity to share in the mirth and hilarity of others, are seen wherever one meets with a company of Chinese. To live in society is a Chinaman’s meat and drink. In a company of his fellows he is something,—by himself, nothing. Men of study and retirement are to be found in China, but by far the greater number seem to have their hearts set upon social delights and the celebration of public festivity. And what most strikes the spectator at such meetings is, the _respect_ which every one is so anxious to pay to all around him,—(another point in which the Chinese nation is most nearly paralleled by the French). Nor are such attentions the frigid offspring of mere formality. “Apart from business,” says Mr Lay, “the intercourse of natives in China is made up of little acts of homage. The rules of relative duty command an individual to regard a neighbour as an elder brother, and thence entitled to the respect belonging to such eldership. These displays of veneration are not occasioned, then, by dread or hope of gain, but are the spontaneous results of a propriety essential to the character of the people,” and strongly developed by their domestic training and the teaching of their schools. In walking abroad, for instance, the stranger may wonder what two gentlemen can have so suddenly found to dispute about; but he soon perceives that each of them is severally refusing to advance a step till the other has set the example, and consented to go ahead!