They have manufacturers of false noses in China, but none of false teeth. There are practitioners who profess to cure the tooth-ache instantaneously, and people worthy of credit have assured me they succeed in doing so. The works of European dentists are among the most admired examples of the skill of foreigners. A mandarin who was anxious to learn something about the making of teeth, once produced to me a box fall of artificial noses of various sizes and colors, with which he supplied the defects of his own; he said he used one sort of nose before and another after his meals, {110} and insisted that Chinese ingenuity was greater than our own. What, in process of time, will be the action of western civilization on the furthest eastern regions--whether, and in what shape, we shall make returns for the instruction our forefathers received from thence--is a curious and interesting inquiry--more interesting from the vast extent of the regions before us. The fire-engine is almost the only foreign mechanical power which has been popularized in China. There is scarcely a watch or clock maker in the whole empire, though opulent men generally carry two watches. The rude Chinese agricultural and manufacturing instruments have been nowhere supplanted by European improvements. No steamship has been built by the Chinese; the only one I ever saw would not move after it was launched; it was said a Chinaman, who had only served on an English steamer as stoker, was required by the authorities to construct the vessel. There is neither gold nor silver coinage; the only currency being a base metal, chien, whose value is the fifth of a farthing. The looms with which their beautiful silk stuffs are woven are of the most primitive character. Yet they have arts to us wholly unknown. They give to copper the hardness and the sharpness of steel; we cannot imitate some of their brightest colors. They have lately sent us the only natural green which is permanent, which has been known to them, as printing, wood engraving, the use of the compass, artillery practice, and other great inventions, from immemorial time. Paper was made from rags long anterior to the Christian era, and promissory notes were used at a still earlier period. The Chinese may be proud of a language and a literature which has existed for thirty centuries, while in Europe there is no literary language now written or spoken which would have been intelligible seven hundred years ago. If, then, this singular people--more than a third of the whole human race--look down with some contempt on the "outside races," let them not be too harshly judged, or too precipitately condemned. -------- From The Month. PIERRE PRÉVOST'S STORY; OR, TRUE TO THE LAST. CHAPTER I. In one of my summer rambles through the north of France, I came across a little seaside village which possessed so many charms that it was the greatest difficulty in the world to tear myself away from it.