Indeed, Eusebius, we have greatly mistaken these people, the Chinese. I will believe their own account of themselves, and that they were a polished people when the ancient Britons went naked, and painted themselves with woad. Besides, here is another picture at hand, clearly showing them to have been, as probably they are still, a sensible people, for they evidently agree with the wisest man who said, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Here they have pictured a school, and the pedagogue is flogging a boy, and he has a very legitimate rod. If this is not a _mark_ of civilisation—for it certainly leaves one, giving, as it were, a bottomry bond of future wisdom—I should like to know what is. Birch-buds are the smart-money of education, and wonderfully improve the memory without touching the head, but reaching the brain by a harmless and distant sympathy. I am sure the Chinese must be a people well worth studying; and, with all our national conceit, we may learn a good deal from them. If we scatter them about with our artillery, and stick them upon bayonets, and despise them because they are innocent, or have been till recently, in the arts of destruction, who are the most savage—the slaughtered or the slaughterers? Are we to call war, civilisation? Perhaps it may be the “rough way” it has to pass. Ask the Czar to answer the question. He will undoubtedly say, that it is cutting the throats of the Turks and filching their property; and he will show you one undoubted proof of the highest civilisation of modern times, consummate hypocrisy—committing murder by wholesale in the name of religion.