hand, the virtues of both are the result of moral cultivation resting on authorities which are not recognised by either. Therefore the tendency is to waive all moral obligations as resting on controverted grounds. Whatever may be the cause, the result is obvious--the Westernised Oriental, unless a Christian, is as a rule only one shade better than the Orientalised Western. While the careless thinker hopes generally that good will come out of the union of the two, he is as a rule terrified lest there should be any tendency to mingle Western with Eastern thought in any one of whom he is fond. A leading man at Tientsin, extolling the healthy climate of the place, related how he had kept his children there ever since they were born. His friend from home, ignorant of life in a Chinese port, said in an appreciative way, "How nice it must be for your children to be able to speak Chinese; I suppose you encourage them to learn it?" The dweller in China turned on him in anger and said, "Thank God, my children do not know one word of Chinese; I would send them home to-morrow if I caught them learning a single sentence." This enthusiasm for ignorance of the language of a great nation is extraordinarily difficult to understand until the danger of the mixture of Eastern and Western thought {39} is realised. Experience has taught those who have lived in China that it is only a few that can come unscathed through the terrible trial of having to live in two moral atmospheres. One of the most striking books that has ever been written is "Indiscreet Letters from Peking." The book is marvellous in the power it has of bringing before the eyes of its reader those awful scenes during the siege of Peking, but it is far more wonderful in the character that it imputes to the hypothetical narrator--a character typical of a man who is equally at home in England and in China; and in that character is portrayed a true but curiously unpleasant picture of the characteristics of both races. The narrator has the courage of a lion; he is absolutely without any sense of honour. He fires at an adversary under the flag of truce. He misuses a Manchu woman who in the horrors of the sack throws herself on his mercy. He connives at the breaking of a solemnly pledged word of honour by a soldier. The character is not overdrawn; characters such as these are common in a mixed world, and it is natural that English people should fear that their children should grow up so unutterably vile. But if the Englishman fears for his child, ought he to ignore the welfare of the country in which he lives, and can we pass over this whole problem as something that does not concern us; for what he fears for his child will happen to the whole Chinese nation.