The Han dynasty which lasted from about B.C. 200 to A.D. 200 has been marked by the historian as the epoch of change. Before that time punishments of all kinds appear to have been terribly severe, and the vengeance of the law pursued even the nearest and most distant relatives of a criminal devoted perhaps to death for some crime in which they could possibly have had no participation. It was then determined that in future only rebellion should entail extirpation upon the families of such seditious offenders, and at the same time legal punishments were limited to five, viz.: bambooing of two degrees of severity, banishment to a certain distance for a certain time or for life, and death. These were, however, frequently exceeded by independent officers against whose acts it would have been vain to appeal, and it was not until the Sui dynasty (589-618 A.D.) that mutilation of the body was absolutely forbidden. It may, indeed, be said to have survived to the present day in the form of the "lingering death" which is occasionally prescribed for parricides and matricides, but that we now know that this hideous fate exists only in words and form. When it was first held to be inconsistent with reason to mete out the same punishment to a highway robber who kills a traveller for his purse, and to the villain who takes away life from the author of his being, a distinction was instituted accordingly, but we can only rest in astonishment that any executioner could be found to put such a horrible law into execution as was devised to meet the requirements of the case. First an arm was chopped off, then the other; the two legs in the same way. Two slits were made transversely on the breast, and the heart was torn out; decapitation finished the proceedings. Now, a slight gash only is made across each collar-bone, and three gashes across the breast in the shape of the character meaning _one thousand_, and indicative of the number of strokes the criminal ought properly to have received. Decapitation then follows without delay. The absurd statement in the Shanghai _Daily News_ of the 16th January last, that this punishment "is the most frightful inflicted, even in any of the darkest habitations of cruelty, at the present day," is utterly unworthy of that respectable journal, but only of a piece with the general ignorance that prevails among foreigners generally on topics connected with China and the Chinese. At the same time, it may fairly be pleaded that the error in question was due to disingenuousness on the part of the translator from the _Peking Gazette_ who, mentioning that such a sentence had been lately passed upon two unhappy beings, adds that, "they have been publicly sliced to death accordingly, with the usual formalities,"--which certainly might lead a mere outsider to conclude that the horrible decree had actually been put into execution. We may notice in passing that this so-called "lingering death" is now almost invariably coupled with the name of