"As man," he wrote, "is the most perfect being under heaven, that of which he is made up is worthy of the very greatest respect; as he is by nature the king of the earth, every other creature upon that earth is subject to his laws and bound to do him homage; to be indifferent to what becomes of his remains when the breath of life no longer animates those remains, is to a certain extent to degrade him from his dignity, and to reduce him to the level of the brutes. The honours you render to those you replace upon the earth will be rendered to you in your turn by those who succeed you." [Sidenote: BURIAL CUSTOMS IN CHINA] During a long sojourn in the Philippine Islands, which have recently been so very much before the public in consequence of the results of the war between America and Spain, I was surprised to notice that the cemeteries were as a rule situated in the most barren and uncultivated districts. Once a year plates of rice were brought and placed upon the graves by the relatives of those interred in them. When I arrived in China, however, I found the same peculiarity the fashion there, and the last resting-places of the dead who had once resided in Canton, Macao, and other large Chinese towns were far away from the haunts of the living. The reason was explained by the sentence quoted below from the books of the great philosopher which is translated from Father Amiot's version. It appears that some agents of Confucius had been sent by him to survey certain districts in the kingdom of Lu, and on their return they reported to him that wealthy inhabitants were in the habit of erecting sepulchres on lands which might be made very fertile. "That is a strange abuse," cried Confucius, "and one which I mean to remedy. Burial-places should not resemble gardens of pleasure and amusement, they should be the scene of sobs and tears; it was thus that they were regarded by the ancients. To enjoy magnificent and sumptuous repasts where everything is suggestive of luxury and joy, near the tombs containing the bones of those to whom we owe our lives, is a kind of insult to the dead. These tombs must no longer be surrounded by walls, they must no longer be encircled by trees symmetrically planted. When deprived of all these frivolous ornaments, the homage which all will hasten to pay to those who have ceased to live will be sincere and pure. If, then, we desire to perform funeral rites in the spirit of their first founders we must remain true to the traditions of the sages of the remote past." [Illustration: FIG. 28.--A CHINESE CEMETERY.] For the twenty-three centuries which have elapsed since this protest was written, Chinese sepulchres have always been placed on high ground of a dreary, desolate aspect, with nothing to mark them but a plain unsculptured slab of stone.