ARTICLE III.-THE RENAISSANCE IN CHINA.

As link after link is added to that chain of communication which brings China nearer to us than Europe was before the rise of steam navigation, it is interesting to know that a mental awakening is taking place among the people of China, by which the Chinese mind will be brought proportionally

nearer to our own.

The announcement of this fact will be received with distrust by some who are skeptical as to the doctrine of human progress. It will be questioned by others who deride as visionary the efforts of Christian enterprise. Nor will it be readily admitted by that large class who are wont to regard the Chinese mind as hopelessly incrusted with the prejudices of antiquity.

Never have a great people been more misunderstood. They are denounced as stolid, because we are not in possession of a medium sufficiently transparent to convey our ideas to them, or transmit theirs to us; and stigmatized as barbarians, because we want the breadth to comprehend a civilization different from our own. They are represented as servile imitators, though they have borrowed less than any other people; as destitute of the inventive faculty, though the world is indebted to them for a long catalogue of the most useful discoveries; and as clinging with unquestioning tenacity to a heritage of traditions, though they have passed through many and profound changes in the course of their history.

They have not been stationary, as generally supposed, through the long past of their national life. The national mind has advanced from age to age with a stately march; not indeed always in a direct course, but at each of its great epochs, recording, as we think, a decided gain; like the dawn of an arctic morning, in which the first blush of the eastern sky disappears for many hours, only to be succeeded by a brighter glow, growing brighter yet, after each interval of darkness, as the time of sunrise approaches.

The existence in such a country of such a thing as a national mind is itself an evidence of a susceptibility to change; and, at the same time, a guarantee for the comparative stability of their institutions. It proves that China is not an immense congeries of polypi, each encased in his narrow cell, a workshop and a tomb, and all toiling on without the stimulus of common sympathy or mental reaction. It proves that China is not like Africa, and aboriginal America, or even like British India, an assemblage of tribes with little or no community of feeling. It is a unit, and through all its members there sweeps the mighty tide of a common life.

In the progress of its enormous growth, it has absorbed many a heterogeneous element, which has always been transformed into its own substance by an assimilative power that attests the marvelous energy of the Chinese civilization. It has, too, undergone many modifications, in consequence of influences operating ab extra as well as from within; and though the process of transmission has often been slow, those influences have always extended to the whole body. Within the bounds of China proper, there is no such thing as the waves of Budhism or Tauism being arrested at the confines of a particular province; nor is there any district in which the pulsations from the great heart of the empire do not by virtue of a common language and common feeling meet with a prompt response.

Yet the existence of this oneness and sympathy, this nationality of mind, which brings modifications on a vast scale within the range of possibility, necessarily interposes an obstacle in the way of their speedy consummation. Planted on the deep foundations of antiquity, extending over so wide an area, and proudly conscious of its own greatness, its very inertia is opposed to change. In China, accordingly, great revolutions, whether political, religious, or intellectual, have always been slow of accomplishment. Compared with the facility with which these are brought about in some occidental countries, they resemble the slow revolutions of those huge planets on the outskirts of the solar system, which require more than the period of a human life to make the circuit of

the sun, while the little planet Mercury wheels round the center once in a few months.

The great dynastic changes, involving as they do a period of disintegration, and another of reconstruction, have usually occupied from one to three generations, while the growth of those grand revolutions, which resulted in the ascendency of a religion or a philosophy, must be reckoned by centuries.

A brief review of some of the more remarkable changes that have occurred in the progress of Chinese civilization, will enable us better to understand the nature of the intellectual movement now going on.`

To begin with the development of political ideas. Instead of being wedded to a uniform systein of despotic government, the Chinese have lived under as many forms of government as ancient Rome or modern France. While the Romans passed under their kings, consuls, and emperors, the Chinese had their tees, their wangs, and their hwangtees. And as France has passed through the various phases of a fendal and centralized monarchy, a republic and a military despotism, so China exhibits an equal variety in the forms of her civil government.

When the hand of history first lifts the curtain, two thousand years before the Christian era, it discloses to us an elective monarchy, in which the voice of the people was admitted to express the will of heaven. Thus Yaou, the model monarch of antiquity, was raised to the throne by the voice of the nobles, in lieu of his elder brother who was set aside on account of his disorderly life. Yaou in turn set aside his own son, and called on the nobles to name a successor, when Shun was chosen. Again, Shun, passing by an unworthy son, transmitted the "yellow" to an able minister, the great Yu.

Yu, though a good sovereign, departed from these illustrions precedents, and incurred the "censure of converting the empire into a family estate." The hereditary principle became fixed. Branches of the imperial family were assigned portions of the empire, and their descendants succeeding to their principalities, the feudal system became confirmed.

This, in China, is the classical form of government, and Confucius himself compares the majesty of the sovereign to the polar star, which keeps its steadfast place while all the

constellations revolve around it. It prevailed under the dynasty of Chow, when the classics were produced; and a large part of the classic writings is occupied with questions relating to the balance of power among the feudal lords, and the regulation of their relations to their sovereign. Transplanted to Japan, it exists till the present day, where a war among the nobles is now exciting the attention of the public. But in China it was overthrown completely two thousand years ago, by one of the most sweeping revolutions on the records of history.

Lecheng, an ambitious noble, sweeping all rival princes from the chess board, dethroned the last degenerate scions of the house of Chow, and proclaimed himself under the title of the First Whangtee. Finding that the literary class were wedded to feudal institutions, he carried on a relentless persecution against the disciples of Confucius; and fearing that the traces of them contained in the Confucian books might lead the people to restore the obliterated principalities, he proceeded to destroy, as far as possible, every vestige of classic literature. His object was to cut the empire loose from the leading strings of antiquity, and to inaugurate a totally new system in the politics of the empire. He further signalized his reign by the erection of that huge barrier on the north-which, to this day, continues to be a wonder of the world. It is only just to add, that the system of centralized power which he introduced, was as firmly established as the great wall itself. The very title of Whangtee, first assumed by Lecheng, continues to be that of the emperors of China at the present day.

Under the dynasty of Han, about the commencement of the Christian era, a still more important modification was introduced into the constitution of the empire-viz. a democratic element, in virtue of which appointments to office were not left to the caprice of the sovereign and his favorites. This consisted in testing the capacity of candidates by a literary examination; and it operated so well that it was not only adopted but greatly improved by succeeding dynasties, and continues in force at the present day. The Americans would as soon surrender their ballot-box, as the Chinese that noble system of examinations, which makes public office the reward

of scholarship, and gives every man an opportunity of elevating himself by his own exertions.

Nor are the Chinese less familiar with the idea of change in the region of religious thought, three systems of religion having appeared on the arena of the empire, and struggled for the ascendency since the sixth century before the Christian era. Confucianism was persecuted under the dynasty of Ts'in; and Tauism and Budhism alternately persecuting and persecuted, kept up the conflict for ages, each in turn seating its own disciples on the throne of the empire. The last of these is of foreign origin; and its universal prevalence does much to reconcile the people to the introduction of religious ideas. from abroad; while it stands forth as a visible proof of the possibility of converting the Chinese to a foreign creed. A leading statesman of China has recently made use of this as an argument that the emperor should not object to the propagation of Christianity. "From the time of Ts'in and Han," he says, "the doctrines of Confucius began to be obscured, and the religion of Budha spread abroad. Now Budhism originated in India, but many of the Hindoos have renounced Budhism and embraced Mohammedanism. The Roman Catholic faith originated in the west, but some nations of the west have adopted Protestantism, and set themselves in opposition to the faith of Rome. Whence we see that other religions rise and fall from age to age, but the doctrine of Confucius survives, unimpaired throughout all ages." The writer is careful to disavow any sympathy for Christianity, and he by no means recommends its adoption; but he wishes to assure His Majesty that there is no serious evil to be apprehended even if Christianity should succeed in supplanting Budhism, as long as the people adhere to the cardinal doctrines of their ancient sage. It is a great thing for the leading minds to acknowledge the possibility of a change even in this hypothetical form., Aside from these religious revolutions, and altogether distinct from them, are several periods of intellectual awakening, that constitute marked epochs in the history of literature.

The first of these was occasioned by the publication of the Confucian Classics. Another occurred in the time of Mencius, when the ethical basis of the school underwent a searching re