But we must say more than this in regard to the fortunes of China. What it has hitherto wanted is, _new ideas_,—and now it is about to get them. In old times, nations could hardly inoculate their neighbours with their ideas save by conquest, and new mental life was only produced after a temporary death of liberty. It is otherwise nowadays, and China is likely to benefit by the change. As long as she was feeble, and as long as the sword was the only civiliser, Providence kept her shut in from the prowess of the restless Western nations. But now that her people have grown like the sands on the sea-shore for multitude, and that steam has become the peaceful “locomotive of principles,” China is opened. Often as she has reformed herself before, the present is her true second-birth. She will now obtain those new ideas of which she has hitherto been starved, and will enter into ever-memorable union with the rest of the civilised world. The energy and science of the Anglo-Saxons will penetrate the empire, and the Chinese will not be slow to avail themselves of the new lights. Aversion to change, when such change is recommended by manifest utility, is not an original element of the Chinese character,—as we learn on the authority of Jesuit writers two centuries ago, before the advent to power of the Tartars, and their jealous exclusion of foreigners. And then, what country in the world can compare with China as a field for the triumphs of mechanical enterprise! Its vast rivers and canals present unrivalled scope for steam-navigation; and its wide plains and valley-lands offer matchless facilities for railways. And then all this amidst the densest and perhaps busiest population in the world. The amount of internal travelling in China is such, that we are assured by those who have penetrated into the interior, that there are continuous streams of travellers on horse, on foot, and on litters, as well as long lines of merchandise, from Canton to the Great Wall, and over distances of fifteen hundred miles;—in many parts so crowded as to impede one another, and even in the mountain-passes so numerous as to leave no traveller out of sight of others before or behind. In what other country of the world are such phenomena to be met with? And though it were vain to enter upon the tempting field for speculation which these few facts—and they could be multiplied indefinitely—present to us; yet we need have no hesitation to predict a striking future for the Chinese race, and one which will benefit the world at large, perhaps not less than themselves. RELEASE. I. Away!—No more, the sport of scorn, My vassal love shall serve the Past. The bonded athlete, blind and shorn, Hath pull’d the darkness down at last! II.