Such are a few of the external differences between the Chinese customs and ours.  But the most essential peculiarity of this nation is the high value which they attribute to knowledge, and the distinctions and rewards which they bestow on scholarship.  All the civil offices in the Empire are given as rewards of literary merit.  The government, indeed, is called a complete despotism, and the emperor is said to have absolute authority.  He is not bound by any written constitution, indeed; but the public opinion of the land holds him, nevertheless, to a strict responsibility.  He, no less than his people, is bound by a law higher than that of any private will,—­the authority of custom.  For, in China, more than anywhere else, “what is gray with age becomes religion.”  The authority of the emperor is simply authority to govern according to the ancient usages of the country, and whenever these are persistently violated, a revolution takes place and the dynasty is changed.  But a revolution in China changes nothing but the person of the monarch; the unwritten constitution of old usages remains in full force.  “A principle as old as the monarchy,” says Du Halde, “is this, that the state is a large family, and the emperor is in the place of both father and mother.  He must govern his people with affection and goodness; he must attend to the smallest matters which concern their happiness.  When he is not supposed to have this sentiment, he soon loses his hold on the reverence of the people, and his throne becomes insecure.”  The emperor, therefore, is always studying how to preserve this reputation.  When a province is afflicted by famine, inundation, or any other calamity, he shuts himself in his palace, fasts, and publishes decrees to relieve it of taxes and afford it aid.

The true power of the government is in the literary class.  The government, though nominally a monarchy, is really an aristocracy.  But it is not an aristocracy of birth, like that of England, for the humblest man’s son can obtain a place in it; neither is it an aristocracy of wealth, like ours in the United States, nor a military aristocracy, like that of Russia, nor an aristocracy of priests, like that of ancient Egypt, and of some modern countries,—­as, for instance, that of Paraguay under the Jesuits, or that of the Sandwich Islands under the Protestant missionaries; but it is a literary aristocracy.

The civil officers in China are called mandarins.  They are chosen from the three degrees of learned men, who may be called the bachelors, licentiates, and doctors.  All persons may be candidates for the first degree, except three excluded classes,—­boatmen, barbers, and actors.  The candidates are examined by the governors of their own towns.  Of those approved, a few are selected after another examination.  These again are examined by an officer who makes a circuit once in three years for that purpose.  They are placed alone in little rooms or closets, with