me, 'It is the beneficent rule of their Majesties the Empresses- Dowager; it is the unspeakable felicity vouchsafed by Heaven to the Emperor; it is the loyalty and virtue of those in high places, of Tseng Kuo-fan, of Li Hung-chang, of Tso Tsung-t'ang.' These, however, are all provincial officials. Within the palace we have the Empresses-Dowager, and His Majesty the Emperor, toiling away from morn till dewy eve; but among the ministers of state who transact business, receiving and making known the Imperial will, working early and late in the Cabinet, the Prince of Kung takes the foremost place; and it is through his agency, as natives and foreigners well know, that for many years China has been regaining her old status, so that any praise of their Imperial Majesties leads naturally on to eulogistic mention of our noble Premier. Hearing now that the Prince has incurred his master's displeasure, there are none who do not fear lest his previous services may be overlooked, hoping at the same time that the Emperor will be graciously pleased to take them into consideration and cancel his present punishment." Lying, under any circumstances, is a very venial offence in China; it is, in fact, no offence at all, for everybody is prepared for lies from all quarters, and takes them as a matter of course. It is strange, however, that such a practical people should not have discovered long ago the mere expediency of telling the truth, in the same way that they have found mercantile honesty to be unquestionably the best policy, and that trade is next to impossible without it. But to argue, as many do, that China is wanting in morality, because she has adopted a different standard of right and wrong from our own, is, _mutato nomine_, one of the most ridiculous traits in the character of the Chinese themselves. They regard us as culpable in the highest degree because our young men choose their own partners, marry, and set up establishments for themselves, instead of bringing their wives to tend their aged parents, and live all together in harmony beneath the paternal roof. We are superior to the Chinese in our utter abhorrence of falsehood: in the practice of filial piety they beat us out of the field. "Spartan virtue" is a household word amongst us, but Sparta's claims to pre-eminence certainly do not rest upon her children's love either for honesty or for truth. The profoundest thinker of the nineteenth century has said that insufficient truthfulness "does more than any one thing that can be named to keep back civilisation, virtue, everything on which human happiness, on the largest scale, depends"--an abstract proposition which cannot be too carefully studied in connection with the present state of public morality in China, and the general welfare of the people. Dr Legge, however, whose logical are apparently in an inverse ratio to his linguistic powers, rushes wildly into the concrete, and declares that every falsehood