During the Ch’ing Dynasty the native music was gradually superseded by a much cruder, less melodious product imported from barbarian lands. With the old style of music went many of the better plays; in many cases they were replaced by the so-called “military plays”, that is to say acrobatic exhibitions of stage fighting to the accompaniment of crashing orchestral pandemonium. Toward the end of the Ch’ing Dynasty the Yuan drama had almost entirely vanished from the Peking stage. In a later chapter will be found a fuller discussion of the newer types of music. But the chief innovation in the drama under the Manchu rule came through the influence of popular novels. Episodes from the famous novels read by everybody were brought on the stage in ever-increasing numbers. The novel, like the drama, is a literary form despised by the pundits and it too began to flourish during the Mongol Dynasty when the literary examinations were suppressed. Many novels are of unknown authorship, because their authors considered such works as beneath their dignity. But for the very reason that the authors did not employ the literary language the great masses of the people were able to enjoy these stories. Let it be remarked in passing that the novel is now coming into its own and is receiving its just share of attention from scholars, at least from the progressive ones. Doctor Hu Shih, of the National University, Peking, has pointed out that it is the novel written in the vernacular that has given to spoken Chinese such unity as it possesses, and that it is through works in the popular language that a common speech for all China may ultimately be achieved. To-day, of course, natives of Peking, Shanghai, and Canton speak languages differing as widely as do those of Berlin, Amsterdam, and London, or Rome, Paris, and Madrid. Due to the crystallization of the written language, however, students from the three Chinese centers can read one another’s letters, although, as I have often observed in laboratories or on the playground, when they converse they have recourse to English. It is due to their linguistic and literary importance that Doctor Hu Shih has edited critical editions of about a dozen famous Chinese novels.