ears of the Chinese the noise appears to be agreeable, if not for its own sake, at least for the beneficial effect it is supposed to produce by driving demons away. Indeed they seem to be of opinion that any noise, provided it be sufficiently harsh and loud, serves this useful purpose. The sound of brass instruments is particularly terrifying to devils; hence the great use which the Chinese make of gongs in rites of exorcism. The clash of gongs, we are told, resounds through the Chinese empire daily, especially in summer, when a rise in the death-rate, which ignorant Europeans attribute to mere climatic influences, stimulates the people to redouble their efforts for the banishment of the fiends, who are the real cause of all the mischief. At such times you may see and hear groups of benevolent and public-spirited men and women banging gongs, clashing cymbals, and drubbing drums for hours together. No protest is made by their neighbours, no complaint that they disturb the night’s rest of the sick and the tired. People listen with resignation or rather with gratitude and complacency to the deafening uproar raised by these generous philanthropists, who thus devote their services gratuitously to the cause of the public health.(378) In Corea, also, the devils are driven out of the towns on New Year’s Eve by the firing of guns and the popping of crackers.(379) (M111) In Tonquin a _theckydaw_ or general expulsion of malevolent spirits commonly took place once a year, especially if there was a great mortality amongst men, the elephants or horses of the general’s stable, or the cattle of the country, “the cause of which they attribute to the malicious spirits of such men as have been put to death for treason, rebellion, and conspiring the death of the king, general, or princes, and that in revenge of the punishment they have suffered, they are bent to destroy everything and commit horrible violence. To prevent which their superstition has suggested to them the institution of this _theckydaw_, as a proper means to drive the devil away, and purge the country of evil spirits.” The day appointed for the ceremony was generally the twenty-fifth of February, one month after the beginning of the new year, which fell on the twenty-fifth of January. The intermediate month was a season of feasting, merry-making of all kinds, and general licence. During the whole month the great seal was kept shut up in a box, face downwards, and the law was, as it were, laid asleep. All courts of justice were closed; debtors could not be seized; small crimes, such as petty larceny, fighting, and assault, escaped with impunity; only treason and murder were taken account of and the malefactors detained till the great seal should come into operation again. At the close of the saturnalia the wicked spirits were driven away. Great masses of troops and artillery having been drawn up with flying colours and all the pomp of war, “the general beginneth then to offer meat