Marvel. The sight of beauty, in her purity and beatitude, turns us from all unrighteousness, and is death to sin. Parker. Before we part, my good Mr. Marvel, let me assure you that we part in amity, and that I bear no resentment in my breast against your friend. I am patient of Mr. Milton; I am more than patient, I am indulgent, seeing that his influence on society is past. Marvel. Past it is indeed. What a deplorable thing is it that Folly should so constantly have power over Wisdom, and Wisdom so intermittently over Folly! But we live morally, as we used to live politically, under a representative system; and the majority (to employ a phrase of people at elections) carries the day. Parker. Let us piously hope, Mr. Marvel, that God in his good time may turn Mr. Milton from the error of his ways, and incline his heart to repentance, and that so he may finally be prepared for death. Marvel. The wicked can never be prepared for it, the good always are. What is the preparation which so many ruffled wrists point out? To gabble over prayer and praise and confession and contrition. My lord Heaven is not to be won by short hard work at the last, as some of us take a degree at the university, after much irregularity and negligence. I prefer a steady pace from the outset to the end, coming in cool, and dismounting quietly. Instead of which, I have known many old playfellows of the devil spring up suddenly from their beds and strike at him treacherously; while he, without a cuff, laughed and made grimaces in the corner of the room. EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.* A suspicion was entertained by the Emperor of China, that England was devising schemes, commercial and political, to the detriment of the Celestial Empire. His majesty, we know, was illinformed on the subject. Never were ministers so innocent of devices to take any advantages in trade or policy; and whatever may bubble up of turbid and deleterious, is brewed entirely for home consumption. It requires no remark, it being universally known, that the Emperor deems it beneath his dignity to appoint ambassadors to reside in foreign courts. On the present occasion he employed a humbler observer, known in our northern latitades by the more ordinary appellation of Spy, although the titular is never gazetted. Personages of this subordinate dignity are often the real ambassadors; and in zeal, information, and integrity, are rarely inferior to the ostensible representatives of majesty. these were laid before his majesty the Emperor, in all which it was declared by the pious writers that Christianity is utterly extinct. His majesty did not greatly care at first whether the assertion were true or false, otherwise than as a matter of history; but protested that he would not allow a fact, even of such trivial importance (such was his expression), to be incorrectly stated in the annals of his reign. By degrees however, the more he reflected on the matter, the more he was convinced that it was by no means trivial. He entertained some hopes, although faint indeed, that the case in reality was not quite so desperate as the later religionists had represented it. From the manuscript reports he had perused, relating to the Jesuits on their expulsion, and from many old Chinese authors, he was induced to believe that the Christians were more quarrelsome and irreconcilable than any other men ; and he wished to introduce a few of the first-rate zealots among the Tartars, to sow divisions and animosities, and to divert them hereafter from uniting their tribes against him. No time, he thought, was to be lost; and Tsing-Ti received his majesty's command to go aboard the Ganges East Indiaman, and communicate with the captain. He had studied the English language from his earliest youth, and soon spoke it fluently and correctly. His good-nature made him a favourite with the officers and crew, and they were greatly pleased and edified by his devotion. It was remarked of him by one of the sailors, that "he must have a cross of the Englishman in him, he takes so kindly to his grog and his Bible." Whatever might have been the Emperor's uneasiness, whether at the near expiration of the East India Company's charter, as liable to produce new and less favourable relations between his empire and England, or from any other cause, the real motive of Tsing-Ti's mission hath been totally misunderstood by the most intelligent of our journalists. Politically much mistaken and tradaced, personally Tsing-Ti is become as well known almost in England as in his native country. At Canton it is reported that he was educated by the late Emperor, as the companion of his son; nor are there wanting those who would trace his rigin to the very highest source, celestiality itself. Certain it is, that he long enjoyed the He seems to have been much attached to the confidence and friendship of his imperial master. Christian religion before his voyage. No doubt, Whispers are afloat in the British factory, that he had access to the imperial library early in life, his mission was hastened by the dissemination of and then probably he laid the foundation of his certain religious tracts, imported from England faith. Few can be unaware that the spoils of the into the maritime towns of China. Several of Jesuits still enrich it, and that the gospel in the *This was written several years before our invasion of Chinese tongue is among the treasures it con China tains. On his arrival in England, Tsing-Ti bought a good number of books, but they were little to his taste, so that when he left us he took with him only Hoyle on the Game of Whist, and a Treatise on Husbandry, beside a manuscript which he purchased as a specimen of caligraphy. He discoursed with admiration on the merits of the two printed authors, declaring that throughout the whole dissertation neither of them had ruffled his temper, or spoken contumeliously of his predecessors. He regretted that he could not in his conscience pay a similar compliment to any other, seeing that Spiritual Guides went booted and spurred, that Pastoral Poets were bitten by mad sheep, and that Sonnetteers sprang up from their mistresses, or down from the moon, to grunt and butt at one another. Such were the literal expressions of Tsing-Ti, who protested he would not chew such bitter betel nor such hot areeka. TSING-TI'S NARRATIVE. FIRST AUDIENCE. Entering the chamber of audience through the azure dragon and the two leopards, the green and the yellow (such being the apartments, as all men know, which are open from time immemorial to the passage of him who bringeth glad tidings), the eyes of his majesty met me with all their light; and, on my last prostration, he thus bespake me with condescension and hilarity: "Tsing-Ti! Tsing-Ti! health, prosperity, long life and long nails to thee! and a tail at thy girdle which might lay siege to the great wall.” Overcome by such ineffable goodness, I lessened in all my limbs; nevertheless my skin seemed too small for them, it tightened so. His celestiality then waved his hand, that whatever was living in his presence, excepting me only, might disappear. He ordered me to rise and stand before him, desirous to pour fresh gladness into me. He then said, what, although it may surpass credibility, and subject me also to the accusation of pride or the suspicion of deafness, I think it not only my glory, but my duty, to record. "O companion of my youth!" said his majesty, "O dragon-claw of my throne!" said Chan-ting,* "O thou who hast hazarded thy existence and hast wetted thy slippers in a sea-boat for me! Verily they shall be yellow+ all thy days, shining forth like the sun, after this self-devotion. So then thou hast returned to my court from the shores of England! How couldst thou keep thy footing on deck, where the ocean bends under it like a cat's back in a rage, as our philosophers say it does between us and the White Island?" Whereunto I did expand both palms horizontally, and abase my half-closed eyes, answering with such gravity as became the occasion and the presence: "Fables! O my Emperor and protector! * Chan-ting, Supreme Court: the Emperor is often so called. The colour of the highest distinction in China, mere fables! I looked out constantly from the vessel, and found it rise no higher the second day than the first, nor the third day than the second, nor more subsequently. The sea, if not always quite level, had only little curvatures upon it, which the Englishmen, in their language, call waves and billows and porpoises. There are many of the sailors who believe these porpoises to be living creatures; for mariners are superstitious. Indeed they have greatly the resemblance of animals; but so likewise have the others. For sometimes they lie seemingly asleep; then are they froward and skittish, and resolute to make the vessel play with them; then querulous and petulant, if not attended to; then sluggish and immovable and malicious; then rising up and flapping the sides, growing more and more gloomy; then glaring and fierce; then rolling and dashing, and calling to comrades at a distance; then hissing and whistling and mutinously roaring; white, black, purple, green; then lifting and shaking us, and casting us abroad, to fall upon anything but our legs.' Emperor. I never met before with such a tremendous description of the sea. Tsing-Ti. I could give a more tremendous one, if imperial ears might entertain it. Emperor. Our ears are open. Tsing-Ti. Without any apparent exertion of its potency, without the ministry of billow or porpoise, it made me, a mandarin of the Celestial Empire, surrender, from the interior provinces of my person, the stores and munitions there deposited by the bounty of my Emperor. Emperor. Whereas the time hath elapsed for demanding their restitution, it shall be compensated unto thee tenfold. And now, Tsing-Ti, to business. In this audience I have shown less anxiety than thou mightest have expected about the success of thy mission. The reason is, I have subdued my enemies, and do not care a rush any longer whether they are converted to Christianity or not. Such is my clemency. However, if thou hast brought back any popes or preachers for the purpose, feed them well at my expense; and let them, if popes, swear and swagger and blaspheme, without scourge or other hindrance; if ordinary preachers, let them take one another by the throat, get drunk, and perform all the other ceremonies of their religion, as freely as at home, according to their oaths and consciences. Tsing-Ti. I have brought none with me, O celestiality! Emperor. So much the better, as things have turned out. But, not knowing of my victories and the submission of the rebels, how happens it that none attend thee? Were none in the market? Tsing-Ti. Plenty, of all creeds and conditions, bating the genuine old Christians. On my first landing indeed they were scarcer, being all busied in running from house to house, canvassing (as it is called) for votes. Emperor. Explain thy meaning; for verily, Tsing-Ti, thou hast brought with thee some fogginess from the West. Tsing-Ti. In England the hereditarily wise constitute and appoint a somewhat more numerous assembly, without which they can not lawfully seize any portion of what belongs to the citizens, nor prohibit them from raising plants to embitter their beverage, nor even from heating their barley to brew it with. Harder still; they can not make wars to make their children's fortunes, nor exeente many other little things without which they might just as well never have been hereditarily wise. But having in their own hands the formation and management of those whose consent is necessary, they lead happy lives. These however, once in seven years, are liable to disturbance. For in England there are some wealthy and some reflecting men, and peradventure some refractory, who oppose these appointments. On which occasion it seems better to call out the clergy than the military; for the clergy are all appointed by the hereditarily wise, and the people are obliged both to listen to them and to pay them, whether they like it or not; nor can they be removed from their places for any act of criminality. They direct the votes by which are elected those who, ander the hereditarily wise, manage the affairs of England. Emperor. I am bewildered. I should have liked very well a couple of popes for curiosities. Tsing-Ti. They have none. Emperor. What dost thou mean, Tsing-Ti? Hereditarily wise, and no popes! Teing Ti. None; beside, in the country where they are bred, there are seldom two found together. When this happens, they are apt to fight in their couples, like a pair of cockerels across a staff on a market-man's shoulder. Emperor. But some other of the many preachers are less pugnacious. Tsing-Ti. I have heard of none, except one scanty sect. These never work in the fields or manufactories, but buy up corn when it is cheap, sell it again when it is dear, and are more thankful to God for a famine than others are for plenteousness. Painting and sculpture they condemn; they never dance, they never sing; music is as hateful to them as discord. They always look cool in hot weather, and warm in cold. Few of them are ugly, fewer handsome, none graceful. I do not remember to have seen a person of dark complexion or hair quite black, or very curly, in this confraternity. None of them are singularly pale, none red, none of diminutive stature, none remarkably tall. They have no priests among them, and constantly refuse to make oblations to the priests royal. Emperor. Naturally; not believing them. Ting-Ti. Naturally, yes; but oppositely to the customs of the country. Emperor. The service of the Christians, you have told me heretofore, is the service of free will. Tsing-Ti. In England, the best Christianity, like the best apple, bears no longer. The fruit of the new plants is either sour or insipid. No genuine ones of the old stock are left anywhere. I heard this from many opposite pulpits; and it was the only thing they agreed in. Yet if one preacher had asserted it in the presence of another, they would forthwith have bandied foul names. An Englishman has more of abusive ones for his neighbour than a Portuguese has of baptismal for his god-child. The first personal proof I received of this copious nomenclature, was upon the identical day I ascertained the suppression of the exercise of Christianity in public. Emperor. These tracts they are not so lying in the main point? Give me thy exemplification. Tsing-Ti. Among the authors held in high repute for piety, and whose hymns are still sung in many of the temples, is one King David, a Jew. Whether those who continue to sing them, sung in earnest or in joke, I can not say. Probably in ridicule; for, on the first Sunday after my arrival, I followed his example, where he says, "I will sing unto the Lord a new song." Resolved to do the same to the best of my poor ability, I too composed a new one, and began to sing it in the streets. Suddenly I was seized and thrown into prison. Emperor. Thrown into prison! my mandarin! Tsing-Ti. On the morrow I was brought before the magistrate, who told me I had broken the peace and the sabbath. I protested to him the contrary: that nobody had fought or quarrelled in my presence or hearing, and that the only smiling faces I had seen the whole day were around me while I was singing. "Smiling faces!" said he, "upon a Sunday! during service! in the teeth of an Act of Parliament." I soon had reason to think the Act of Parliament had rather long and active ones, when twenty or thirty more such offenders as myself came under their pressure, for dancing on the night preceding, and several minutes (it was asserted) after the hour of its close had struck in some parts of the city. Dancing is forbidden, not only to the poor, but also to the middle ranks; and this was an aggravation of the offence. Emperor. Tsing-Ti! thou art a good jurist in the institutions of my empire, and I did not depute thee to enrich it with the enactments of another: but this can not be among the statutes of a nation which pretends to as much civility and freedom as most in Asia. That such an order was given from court, on some unlucky day when the King was much afflicted with lumbago, is credible enough. Tsing-Ti. Nothing more probable: and the magistrate told us, to our cost, it was an Act of Parliament. Emperor. I can not but smile at thy simplicity. It was of course an Act of Parliament if the King willed it. Doubtless when his loins came into order again, his people might dance. | feeble blind whelps see the light and stand upon There are occasions when it would be unseason- their legs? No wonder there are eternal changes able and undutiful to exercise such agility near in those countries. Such filthy litter wants often the palace of an elderly prince, grown somewhat unwieldly otherwise might not music and dancing keep a people like the English out of political discontent and civil commotions? Might not these amusements relieve the weight of their taxes and dispell the melancholy of their tempers? No idler can get drunk while he is dancing or while he is singing; and against debauchery there is no surer preservative than opening as many sluices as possible to joy and happiness. Where innocent pleasures are easily obtained, the guiltier shun the competition. But how long is it since the race of Christians, I mean the pure breed, has quite disappeared from the land? Tsing-Ti. Nobody could inform me: it can not be long. I saw several thousand men who were dressed exactly like them; having cases for their heads, cases for their bodies, cases for their thighs. These the Christians, during many ages, wore from pure humility; it being the very dress in which monkeys are carried about to play their tricks before the populace, and which was invented by a king of France; whence he and his successors are styled, unto this day, the most Christian. Never was there anything upon earth so ugly and inconvenient. They devised it for mortification, which they carried by this invention to such an extremity, as should prevent the possibility of a sculptor or painter giving them the appearance of humanity. Several of the wickeder went still farther in self-abasement; not only covering their heads with dust, which they contrived to procure as white as possible, to give them the appearance of extreme old age and imbecility, but mingled with it (abominable to record) the fat of swine! Emperor. I have some miniatures which attest the fact. Adultresses, and some other women of ill repute, were marked with a black riband round the neck, and their hair was drawn up tight, exposing the roots, and fastened to a footstool, which they were obliged to carry on their heads. No rank exempted an offender. I possess several favourites of the Most Christian King, the late Loo-Hi, labouring under the infliction of this disgrace. Tsing-Ti. Self-imposed tortures survive Christianity. I have seen a portrait of the reigning King of England,* in which he appears so pious and devout, so resolved to please God at any price, that he is represented with his legs confined in narrow japanned cabinets, which the English, when applied to these purposes, call boots. They are stiff and black, without gold or other ornament, or even an inscription to inform us on what occasion he made the vow of endur ance. Emperor. Humble soul! may God pardon him his sins! I pity the people too. When will the * George the Fourth. a fresh tossing on the fork. The axe grapples the neck of some among their rulers: others take a neighbourly pinch out of the same box as the rats: others have subjects who play the nightmare with them; as lately in Muscovy. I find such accidents occurring the most frequently where the religion is most flourishing. My father, who was curious in learning the customs and worships of the West, related to me that the people of one sect refuse to bury those of another, leaving them exposed to the dogs. Tsing-Ti. This, O my Emperor! was never the custom in England all the time I resided there. But indeed it can not be said that in England there are any customs at all. The very words of their language, I am informed, change their signification and spelling, twice or thrice in a man's lifetime. On my first arrival in London, I was somewhat unwell in consequence of the voyage, yet I could not resist the impulse of curiosity, and the desire of walking about in the spacious and lofty streets. After the second day however I was constrained by illness to keep within my chamber for five; at the end of those five, so great a change had taken place in the habiliments of the citizens, that I fancied another people had invaded and vanquished them; and, such were my fears, I kept my bed for seven. At last I ventured to ask whether all was well. My inquiry raised some surprise; and, fancying that I had spoken less plainly than I might have done, I took courage to ask distinctly whether all in the city was safe and quiet. After many interrogatories for the motive and cause of mine, the first circuitous, the last direct, I was highly gratified at finding that I had succumbed to a false alarm, and that novelty in dress is a religious duty celebrated on the seventh day. Emperor. Tsing-Ti! thou never shalt command for me against the Tartars, should they in future dare to show their broad faces and distant eyes over the desert. Tsing-Ti. God's will and the Emperor's be done! In this wide empire there is no lack of valour; I will offend none by aspiring to an undue precedency. Modesty becomes the wise, and more the unwise. Greatness may follow, and ambition urge forward the bold, but the tardy man cometh sooner to contentment. May we never see the outermost corner of the Tartar's eye! none hath more evil in it. Emperor. It must shoot far if it overtake and harm thee, Tsing-Ti! But prythee go on about the fact of burial, and tell me whether there is any nation so western, as to refuse it in time of peace. Tsing-Ti. The nations of Europe are so infinitely more barbarous than anything we in China can conceive, that, however incredible it may appear, the story is not unfounded. The first avowed enemies of Christianity were the associates of a sorcerer, who shaved his head that he might | fit a crown upon it. He told people that he could forgive more sins than they could commit. Both parties tried, and it turned out that he was the winner. He pocketed the stakes, and tempted them to try again: and the game has been going on ever since. Ill-tempered men were scandalised at this exhibition, and many disturbances and battles have been the consequence. The sorcerer, now become a priest-king, refuses burial to those who deny his power of remitting sins, and his right to open the gates of paradise on paying toll and tariff. Many of these begin to think they have gone too far, and have slunk back to the old sorcerer, who reproves them sharply, and treats them like conger eels, putting salt into their mouths for purification. If they spit it out again, they frequently are medicated with minerals more corrosive. Emperor. Why, I wonder, do not the neighbouring princes catch and cage him? Ting-Ti. He frightens them. He has the appointment of their nurses, who tell them marvellous tales about his potency, and how he can turn one thing into another. The English were among the first to expose and abolish his impostures; but many are coming back to him, now they are tired of Christianity; and already they begin to stick up again the images of idlers and fanaties, whom the magistrates of old whipt and hung for sedition. Emperor. Better such fellows should be venerated (were it only that they are dead and out of the way) than intolerant and blood-thirsty varlets, who carry hatred in their bosoms as carefully as an amulet, and who will not let the grave open and close upon it. Ting-Ti. They are all of the same quality: they are all either bark or blossom of that tree of which the Jesuits are the nutmegs. Emperor. I thought my ancestors, of blessed memory, had given an intelligible lesson to the patentates of Europe, how to grate those said nutmegs into powder. I thought our wisdom had entered into their councils, and such malefactors were everywhere supprest. Ting Ti. They were so, for a time. But there are many things which were formerly known only poisons, and which are now employed as salutary drugs. Jesuitism is one of these. Emperor. After all our inquiries, how very imperfect is our knowledge of Europe! The books Europeans serve only to perplex us. Those which have been interpreted to me, on their polity, represent the English as a free people, at is, a people in which several hundred mandarms have a certain weight in the government. Yet appears that there are provinces in the empire where the inhabitants pay stipends to priests, who abominate and curse them, and with whom they have nothing in common but their corn and catthe. Furthermore it is represented, that those who are making the noisiest appeals to liberality, would leave exposed to the fowls of the air the dead bodies of other sects. Tsing-Ti. This inhumanity can not be practised in England: it belongs to the old sorcerers: it however is gaining ground in every part of Europe. Where it predominates, all dissentients are denied the rites of burial; and some entire professions lie under the same interdict. Actors of comedy, who render men ashamed of their follies and vices, are conceived to intrench on the attributes of the priesthood: they must lie unburied. Actors of tragedy, who have awakened all the sympathies of the human heart, must hope for none when they have left the scene. Emperor. Yet haply the sage himself, when living, hath less deeply impressed the lessons of wisdom than his representative in the theatre; and even the hero hath excited less enthusiasm. The English, I suspect, are too humane, too generous, too contemplative, to countenance or endure so hideous an imposture. Tsing-Ti. Gratification is not sterile in their country: gratitude, lovely gratitude, is her daughter. The great actor is received on equal terms among the other great. I have inquired of almost every sect, to the number of forty or fifty, and every one abhors the imputation of posthumous rancour, excepting the old sorcerers. The arguments of another, with a priest of that persuasion, are fresh in my memory. Emperor. What an ice-house must thy memory be, Tsing-Ti! to keep such things fresh in it! Tsing-Ti. They might have been uttered in the serenity of the Celestial Empire, and in the most holy place. Emperor. Indeed! I would hear 'em then. Tsing-Ti. "Good God!" said the appellant to the sorcerer's man, "if anyone hath injured us in life, ought we not at least to cast our enmity aside when life is over? Even supposing we disregard the commandment of our heavenly father, to forgive as we hope to be forgiven; even supposing we disbelieve him when he tells us that on this condition, and on this only, we can expect it; would not humanity lead us through a path so pleasant, to a seat so soft, to so wholesome and invigorating a repose? The pagan, the heathen, the idolater, the sacrificer of his fellow-men, beholding a corpse on the shore, stopt, bent over it, tarried, cast upon it three handfuls of sand, and bade the spirit that had dwelt in it, and was hovering (as they thought) uneasily about it, go its way in peace. Would you do less than this, for one who had lived in the same city, and bowed to the same God as your self?" Emperor. The sorcerer's man must have learnt more than sorcery, if his ingenuity supplied him with an answer in the affirmative. Tsing-Ti. "Yes," replied he, "if the holiness of our lord commanded it." Emperor. Moderate the prancing of thy speech, O Tsing-Ti, that I may mount it easily, look down from it complacently, and descend from it again without sore or irksomeness. What holiness? What lord? Thou wert talking of the sorcerer. Are these ruffians called lords and holinesses? |