Although a very great similarity is observable between many of the ancient Jewish rites and ceremonies and those in use among the Chinese, yet there seems to be no reason for supposing that the latter received any part of their religion from the ancestors of those Jews that are still in the country. This, however, is not the case with regard to the priests of Budha, who, according to the Chinese records, came by the invitation of one of their Emperors from some part of India, near Thibet, about the sixtieth year of the Christian era. These priests succeeded so well in introducing the worship of Budha, that it continues to this day to be one of the popular religions of the country; and that no traces of the original name should remain is the less surprising, as they could not possibly pronounce either the B or the D; beside, they make it an invariable rule, as I have already observed, not to adopt any foreign names. In some part of the seventh century, a few Christians of the Nestorian sect passed from India into China where, for a time, they were tolerated by the government. But, having most probably presumed upon its indulgence, and endeavoured to seduce the people from the established religions of the country, they were exposed to dreadful persecutions, and were at length entirely extirpated, after numberless instances of their suffering martyrdom for the opinions they had undertaken to propagate to the "utmost corners of the earth." When Gengis-Khan invaded China, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, a number of Christians of the Greek church followed his army into this country; and they met with such great encouragement from the Tartars, that when Kublai-Khan succeeded to the government and built the city of Pekin, he gave them a grant of ground within the walls of the city for the purpose of building a church, in order to retain in the empire men of so much learning and of abilities so much superior to those of the Chinese; who, however, on their part, have affected, in their history, to consider the Monguls as the greatest barbarians, for turning their horses into the apartments of the palaces, while they themselves were contented to pitch their tents in the courts or quadrangular spaces surrounded by the buildings. Father Le Compte, in his memoirs of China, says, but I know not on what authority, that at the taking of the city of Nankin the Tartars put all the Chinese women in sacks, without regard to age or rank, and sold them to the highest bidder; and that such as, in thus "buying the pig in the poke," happened to purchase an old, ugly, or deformed bargain, made no ceremony in throwing it into the river. If Father Le Compte was not the inventor of this, among many other of his pleasant stories, it certainly tells as little in favour of the Chinese, who must have been the purchasers, as of the Tartars; but we will charitably suppose the thing never happened. It seems, however, that the