We cannot refrain from translating verbatim one passage which has reference to the English, and of which we fancy Ch’ung-hou himself would be rather ashamed since his visit to the Outside Nations.  Here it is:—­

“When the English barbarians first began to give trouble to the Inner Nation, they relied on the strength of their ships and the excellence of their guns.  It was therefore proposed to build large ships and cast heavy cannon in order to oppose them.  I represented, however, that vessels are not built in a day, and pointed out the difficulties in the way of naval warfare.  I showed that the power of a cannon depends upon the strength of the powder, and the strength of the powder upon the sulphur and saltpetre; the latter determining the explosive force forwards and backwards, and the former, the same force towards either side.  Therefore to ensure powder being powerful, there should be seven parts saltpetre out of ten.  The English barbarians have got rattan ash which they can use instead of sulphur, but saltpetre is a product of China alone.  Accordingly, I memorialised His Majesty to prohibit the export of saltpetre, and caused some thirty-seven thousand pounds to be seized by my subordinates.”

PREDESTINATION

Theoretically, the Chinese are fatalists in the fullest sense of the word.  Love of life and a desire to enjoy the precious boon as long as possible, prevent them from any such extended application of the principle as would be prejudicial to the welfare of the nation; yet each man believes that his destiny is pre-ordained, and that the whole course of his life is mapped out for him with unerring exactitude.  Happily, when the occasion presents itself, his thoughts are generally too much occupied with the crisis before him, to be able to indulge in any dangerous speculations on predestination and free-will; his practice, therefore, is not invariably in harmony with his theory.

On the first page of a Chinese almanack for the current year, we have a curious woodcut representing a fly, a spider, a bird, a sportsman, a tiger, and a well.  Underneath this strange medley is a legend couched in the following terms:—­“Predestination in all things!” The letterpress accompanying the picture explains that the spider had just secured a fat fly, and was on the point of making a meal of him, when he was espied by a hungry bird which swooped down on both.  As the bird was making off to its nest with this delicious mouthful, a sportsman who happened to be casting round for a supper, brought it down with his gun, and was stooping to pick it up, when a tiger, also with an empty stomach, sprang from behind upon the man, and would there and then have put an end to the drama, but for an ugly well, on the brink of which the bird had dropped, and into which the tiger, carried on by the impetus of his spring, tumbled headlong, taking with him man, bird,