first of those arts was carefully studied, and apparently highly developed. Gunpowder was known four centuries before our era, and we read not only of this “devouring fire,” but of “fireboxes,” “fire-tubes,” and “globes containing the fire of heaven,”—which latter expression, by its allusion to lightning, seems to indicate as if powder, even in those days, was used as something more than a mere toy. A knowledge of the properties of the magnet or loadstone is another thing in which the Chinese were some two thousand or more years in advance of us Europeans; and the art of printing (by means of wooden blocks—xylography) was in use among them six centuries before anything of the kind was thought of elsewhere. The character of Chinese literature may be guessed from what we have said of their system of education, which eschews speculation, and attends to little else than the precepts of public and private morality. The grandest, or we may say, the only grand, achievements of their literature are in the department of practical politics and morals; and next to this are their annals and statistical reports upon the various provinces of the empire. Poetry is much studied by the educated classes in early life for the sake of obtaining command of language and elegance of expression, the latter of which is highly valued in the communications and epistles of the government officials; but the Chinese temperament possesses little of the _vis poetica_; and of the millions of Mandarins who have learned to rhyme, very few indeed have written anything that would pass as mediocre in Europe. They have a good command of poetic figures and expressions, and their descriptive pieces and moral odes are fair productions; but that is all that can be said in their favour. Historical writings occupy a prominent place in their literature, and the greatest pains are taken to insure accuracy of statement; but these works are mere annals or chronologies, and have no pretensions to those intellectual and artistic qualities which distinguish the Livys and Xenophons, the Gibbons and Humes of ancient and modern Europe. It is to the credit of China that it has had a drama from a very early period, although we cannot speak particularly as to its merits. The writing of novels, also, dates as far back as the third century, and seems to be a department of literature very congenial to the Chinese mind. Such works exist in great numbers, and amongst much trash there are some very able productions.