The pertinacious zeal with which the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries strove to inculcate their own relatively new doctrines into the minds of this very ancient nation, and their futile endeavours to discover early traces of their own faith in that country, left them no time for a profound study of the belief which prevails there. Therefore Europe has only lately obtained some slight knowledge of the religious state of the Chinese. We now know, that is to say, that in China there exists first of all a worship of Nature, which is universally professed, and dates from the earliest times, even, it is alleged, from before the discovery of fire, wherefore animals were sacrificed raw. The sacrifices offered up publicly at certain seasons or after great events by the Chinese Emperor and the chief dignitaries of the Empire, belong to this worship. These sacrifices are dedicated first and foremost to the blue sky and to the earth--to the blue sky in the winter solstice, to the earth in the summer solstice--and, after these, to every possible power of Nature: the sea, mountains, rivers, winds, thunder, rain, fire, &c. &c. A genius presides over each of these, and each genius has several temples. On the other hand, each genius presiding over every single province, town, village, or street, nay over family funerals and even sometimes over a merchant's warehouse, has also temples; only, in the two last cases they are destined exclusively for private worship. But public worship is besides offered up to former illustrious Emperors, founders of dynasties and to heroes, _i.e._ to all such as have benefited (Chinese) mankind by word or deed. Even these have their temples: Confucius alone having no less than 1,650 dedicated to him. This therefore accounts for the great number of small temples found throughout the Empire. With this hero-worship too, is associated the private worship offered up by every respectable family on the tombs of their ancestors.--Now besides this worship of Nature and of heroes, which is universal, there are three other prevailing religious doctrines in China, more with a dogmatical intent. First among these is the doctrine of Taossee, founded by Laotse, an older contemporary of Confucius. This is the doctrine of Reason, as the inner order of the Universe or inherent principle of all things, of the great One, the sublime Gable-Beam (Taiki) which supports all the Rafters, yet is above them (properly the all-pervading Soul of the World) and of Tao, _i.e._ the _Way_, namely to salvation: that is, to redemption from the world and its misery. We have an exposition of this doctrine taken from the fountain-head in Stanislas Julien's translation (1842) of Laotse's Taoteking, in which we find that the Tao-doctrine completely harmonizes with Buddhism both in meaning and in spirit. This sect however seems to have fallen very much into the background, and its teachers to be