This drama, with ninety-nine others, published together in one work, are considered as the classical stock-pieces of the Chinese stage; but like ourselves, they complain that a depraved taste prevails for modern productions very inferior to those of ancient date. It is certainly true, that every sort of ribaldry and obscenity are encouraged on the Chinese stage at the present day. A set of players of a superior kind travel occasionally from Nankin to Canton; at the latter of which cities, it seems, they meet with considerable encouragement from the Hong merchants, and other wealthy inhabitants. At these exhibitions the English are sometimes present. The subject and the conduct of one of their stock pieces, which being a great favourite is frequently repeated, are so remarkable, that I cannot forbear taking some notice of it. A woman being tempted to murder her husband performs the act whilst he is asleep, by striking a small hatchet into his forehead. He appears on the stage with a large gash just above the eyes, out of which issues a prodigious effusion of blood, reels about for some time, bemoaning his lamentable fate in a song, till exhausted by loss of blood, he falls, and dies. The woman is seized, brought before a magistrate, and condemned to be flayed alive. The sentence is put in execution; and, in the following act, she appears upon the stage not only naked, but completely excoriated. The thin wrapper with which the creature (an eunuch) is covered, who sustains the part, is stretched so tight about the body, and so well painted, as to represent the disgusting object of a human being deprived of its skin; and in this condition the character sings or, more properly speaking, whines nearly half an hour on the stage, to excite the compassion of three infernal or malignant spirits who, like Æacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, sit in judgment on her future destiny. I have been informed that it is scarcely possible to conceive a more obscene, indelicate, and disgusting object, than this favourite exhibition, which, if intended "to hold the mirror up to nature," it is to nature in its most gross, rude, and uncivilized state, ill-agreeing with the boasted morality, high polish, refined delicacy, and ceremonious exterior of the Chinese nation; but it tends, among other parts of their real conduct in life, to strengthen an observation I have already made with regard to their filial piety, and which, with few exceptions, may perhaps be extended to most of their civil and moral institutions, "that they exist more in state maxims, than in the minds of the people." As, however, a Chinese might be led to make similar reflexions on the exhibition of Harlequin Skeleton, and those numerous representations that of late years have crept upon our own stage, where ghosts, hobgoblins, and bleeding statues are called in aid of the _spectacle_, I should hesitate to draw any general conclusion, with