was worthy of a chevalier. But the following is neither in the style of Cicero nor in that of Cæsar

"Tout a fleure ynsi que je me volois mettre o lit est arrivé Laval qui m'a aporté la serteneté du lévement du siège."

"All was going so well that, when I was going to bed, Laval arrived, and brought me the certainty of the siege being raised."

We have letters from the hand of Louis XIII., which are no better written. It is not required of a king to write letters like Pliny, or verses like Virgil; but no one can be excused from expressing himself with propriety in his own tongue. Every prince that writes like a lady's maid has been ill educated.

CHINA.

SECTION I.

WE have frequently observed elsewhere, how rash and injudicious it is to controvert with any nation, such as the Chinese, its authentic pretensions. There is no house in Europe, the antiquity of which is so well proved as that of the empire of China. Let us figure to ourselves a learned Maronite of Mount Athos questioning the nobility of the Morozini, the Tiepolo, and other ancient houses of Venice; of the princes of Germany, of the Montmorencys, the Chatillons, or the Talleyrands, of France, under the pretence that they are not mentioned in St. Thomas, or St. Bonaventure. We must impeach either his sense or his sincerity.

Many of the learned of our northern climes have felt confounded at the antiquity claimed by the Chinese. The question, however, is not one of learning. Leaving all the Chinese literati, all the mandarins, all the emperors, to acknowledge Fohi as one of the first who gave laws to China, about two thousand five hundred years before our vulgar æra. Admit that there must be people before there are kings. Allow that a long period of time is necessary before a numerous people, having discovered the necessary arts of life,

unite in the choice of a common governor. But if you do not make these admissions, it is not of the slightest consequence. Whether you agree with us or not, we shall always believe that two and two make four.

In a western province, formerly called Celtica, the love of singularity and paradox has been carried so far as to induce some to assert, that the Chinese were only an Egyptian, or rather perhaps a Phenician colony. It was attempted to prove, in the same way as a thousand other things have been proved, that a king of Egypt, called Menes by the Greeks, was the Chinese king Yu; and that Atoes was Ki, by the change of certain letters. In addition to which, the following is a specimen of the reasoning applied to the subject:

The Egyptians sometimes lighted torches at night. The Chinese light lanterns: the Chinese are therefore evidently a colony from Egypt. The jesuit Parennin who had, at the time, resided five and twenty years in China, and was master both of its language and its sciences, has rejected all these fancies with a happy mixture of elegance and sarcasm. All the mis

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sionaries, and all the Chinese, on receiving the intelligence that a country in the extremity of the west was developing a new formation of the Chinese empire, treated it with contemptuous ridicule. Father Perennin replied with somewhat more seriousness :Egyptians," says he, "when going to people China, must evidently have passed through India." India at that time peopled or not? If it was, would it permit a foreign army to pass through it? If it was not, would not the Egyptians have stopped in India? Would they have continued their journey through barren deserts, and over almost impracticable mountains, till they reached China, in order to form colonies there, when they might so easily have established them on the fertile banks of the Indus or the Ganges?

The compilers of a universal history, printed in England, have also shown a disposition to divest the Chinese of their antiquity, because the jesuits were the first who made the world acquainted with China.

This is unquestionably a very satisfactory reason for saying to a whole nation-" You are liars.'

It appears to me a very important reflection, which may be made on the testimony given by Confutzé, called by us Confucius, to the antiquity of his nation; and which is, that Confucius had no interest in falsehood: he did not pretend to be a prophet; he claimed no inspiration; he taught no new religion; he used no delusions; flattered not the emperor under whom he lived he did not even mention him. In short, he is the only founder of institutions among mankind who was not followed by a train of women.

I knew a philosopher who had no other portrait than that of Confucius in his study. At the bottom of it were written the following lines:

Without assumption he explor'd the mind,
Unveil'd the light of reason to mankind;
Spoke as a sage, and never as a seer,

Yet, strange to say, his country held him dear.

I have read his books with attention; I have made extracts from them; I have found in them nothing but the purest morality, without the slightest tinge of charlatanism. He lived six hundred years before, our vulgar æra. His works were commented on by the most learned men of the nation. If he had falsified, if he had introduced a false chronology, if he had written of emperors who never existed, would not some one have been found, in a learned nation, who would have reformed his chronology? One Chinese only has chosen to contradict him, and he met with universal execration.

Were it worth our while, we might here compare the great wall of China with the monuments of other nations, which have never even approached it; and remark, that, in comparison with this extensive work, the pyramids of Egypt are only puerile and useless masses. We might dwell on the thirty-two eclipses calculated in the ancient chronology of China, twentyeight of which have been verified by the mathematicians of Europe. We might show, that the respect entertained by the Chinese for their ancestors is an

evidence that such ancestors have existed; and repeat the observation, so often made, that this reverential respect has in no small degree impeded, among this people, the progress of natural philosophy, geometry, and astronomy.

It is sufficiently known, that they are, at the present day, what we all were three hundred years ago, very ignorant reasoners. The most learned Chinese is like one of the learned of Europe in the fifteenth century, in possession of his Aristotle. But it is possible to be a very bad natural philosopher, and at the same time an excellent moralist. It is, in fact, in morality, in political economy, in agriculture, in the necessary arts of life, that the Chinese have made such advances towards perfection. All the rest they have been taught by us in these we might well submit to become their disciples.

Of the Expulsion of the Missionaries from China.

Humanly speaking, independently of the service which the jesuits might confer on the Christian religion, are they not to be regarded as an ill-fated class of men, in having travelled from so remote a distance to introduce trouble and discord into one of the most extended and best-governed kingdoms of the world? And does not their conduct involve a dreadful abuse of the liberality and indulgence shewn by the orientals, more particularly after the torrents of blood shed, through their means, in the empire of Japan? A scene of horror, to prevent the consequences of which the government believed it absolutely indispensable to shut their ports against all foreigners.

The jesuits had obtained permission of the emperor of China, Cam-hi, to teach the Catholic religion. They made use of it, to instil into the small portion of the people under their direction, that it was incumbent upon them to serve no other master than him who was the vicegerent of God on earth, and who dwelt in Italy on the banks of a small river called the Tiber; that every other religious opinion, every other worship, was an abomination in the sight of God, and whoever did

not believe the jesuits would be punished by him to all eternity; that their emperor and benefactor, Cam-hi, who could not even pronounce the name of Christ, as the Chinese language possesses not the letter r, would suffer eternal damnation; that the emperor Youtchin would experience, without mercy, the same fate; that all the ancestors, both of Chinese and Tartars, would incur a similar penalty; that their descendants would undergo it also, as well as the rest of the world; and that the reverend fathers, the jesuits, felt a sincere and paternal commiseration for the damnation of so many souls.

They at length succeeded in making converts of three princes of the Tartar race. In the mean time the emperor Cam-hi died, towards the close of the year 1722. He bequeathed the empire to his fourth son, who has been so celebrated through the whole world for the justice and the wisdom of his government, for the affection entertained for him by his subjects, and for the expulsion of the jesuits.

They began by baptising the three princes, and many persons of their household. These neophytes had the misfortune to displease the emperor on some points which merely respected military duty. About this very period the indignation of the whole empire against the missionaries broke out into a flame. All the governors of provinces, all the Colaos, presented memorials against them. The accusations against them were urged so far that the three princes, who had become disciples of the jesuits, were put into irons.

It is clear that they were not treated with this severity simply for having been baptised, since the jesuits themselves acknowledge in their letters, that they experienced no violence, and that they were even admitted to an audience of the emperor, who honoured them with some presents. It is evident therefore that the emperor Youtchin was no persecutor; and, if the princes were confined in a prison on the borders of Tartary, while those who had converted them were treated so liberally, it is a decided proof that they were state prisoners, and not martyrs.