The first Emperor of the Han dynasty was besieged, about 200 B.C., in a northern city, by a vast army of Hsiung-nu, the ancestors of the Huns, under the command of the famous chieftain, Mao-tun. One of the Chinese generals with the besieged Emperor discovered that Mao-tun's wife, who was in command on one side of the city, was an extremely jealous woman; and he forthwith caused a number of wooden puppets, representing beautiful girls and worked by strings, to be exhibited on the wall overlooking the chieftain's camp. At this, we are told, the lady's fears for her husband's fidelity were aroused, and she drew off her forces. The above account may be dismissed as a tale, in which case we are left with Punch and Judy on our hands. To return to city sights. The tricks of street-jugglers as witnessed in China seem to be very much those of ancient Greece. In both countries we have such feats as jumping about amongst naked swords, spitting fire from the mouth, and passing a sword down the throat. Then there are the advertisements on the walls; the mule-carts and mule-litters; the sunshades, or umbrellas, carried by women in Greece, by both sexes in China. The Japanese language is said to contain no terms of abuse, so refined are the inhabitants of that earthly paradise. The Chinese language more than makes up for this deficiency; and it is certainly curious that, as in ancient Greece, the names of animals are not frequently used in this connection, with the sole exception of the dog. No Chinaman will stand being called a dog, although he really has a great regard for the animal, as a friend whose fidelity is proof even against poverty. In the ivory shops in China will be found many specimens of the carver's craft which will bear comparison, for the patience and skill required, with the greatest triumphs of Greek workmen. Both nations have reproduced the human hand in ivory; the Greeks used it as an ornament for a hairpin; the Chinese attach it to a slender rod about a foot and a half in length, and use it as a back-scratcher. The Chinese drama, which we can only trace vaguely to Central Asian sources, and no farther back than the twelfth century of our era, has some points of contact with the Greek drama. In Greece the plays began at sunrise and continued all day, as they do still on the open-air stages of rural districts in China, in both cases performed entirely by men, without interval between the pieces, without curtain, without prompter, and without any attempt at realism. As formerly in Greece, so now in China, the words of the play are partly spoken and partly sung, the voice of the actor being, in both countries, of the highest importance. Like the Greek actor before masks were invented, the Chinese actor paints his face, and the thick-soled boot which raises the Chinese tragedian from the ground is very much the counterpart of the cothurnus.