We have often wished that the British public could see the Taoutai of Shavghai, or any other Mandarin of high rauk and position, make one of his state pro-grosses. The spectacle would open the eyes of the philo-barbarians, toa most salutary extent. At home, when men hear of Viceroys, Prefects, and Gover-they picture these officials as ally moving in pomp and splendour, seated in gorgeous cbairsand surrounded by guards, lictors, scribes, and equerries. 'These grand names all convey superb and dignified ideas to the English mind. We think of a personage in rich robes, surrounded by various attendants, holding high rauk and clothed with' insignia of author But as a fact, what do we sce? The Magistrate seated in a sedan chair of a ver ordinary description, and his secretary follows in one from which even a foreign hospital patient would shrink. He is clothed in costly robes, but the surroundings of zo are beggarly beyond desert The persons pomously design "Jictors" are 1agumuilin coolies of the lowest class, compared with whom a crossing sweeper in Hounsditeh is a man of cleanliness and culture. The secretaries are pale, ichly, underpaid hirelings, little better than the servants who carry them. Now are not prepared to deny that a very high degree of intellectual acumen may exist alongside of extreme personal filthiness; but still we conceive that enation which glories in minute etiquetta, propriety, correctness of demean our, and outside observance, is not presented in a favourable. light when ils high officials upbear in the sordid style that is common in China, There are nations in Europe and other quarters of the globe which avowedly scorn trappings, titles and pomp; and therefore we are not surprised when their representativesareseverely simple in their dress and carriage. it must be recollected that the Chinese are a formal and ostentatious people, and ought by rights to be scrupuiously careful to preserve a dignified outward appearance; and their conspicuous failure to do this is typical of the rottenness and weakness of the system they represent. Let any practical man who desires the real, not the ideal or diplomatic, good of China, observe the improvement made in the aspect of a coolie by association with foreigners. Let him compare the Y: men ranners of his Excellency th Taoutai with a native Municipal pot!
and sce how much the individual is improved by being placed under a reasonable instead of an effete and outworn system. The difference is apparent. Any governing body that li enforce order and cleanliness may develope (as the phrase goes) a China man into a good and useful and decent He is the mo: the most obedient of men; and if ence shown the more excellent way he will follow it persistently; but, if left in the mud of his own corrupt system, his tend to keep his degrade ion. We are re that the ill tions we are ug may be easily ucaled for their homeliness; but a nation is made up of individuals, and if we see the individual. improved socially and physically by being brought under a certain regime, we conceive thata like policy, if extended to the whole nation, would produce very beneficial results. We confess we have boundless faith in baths and lavatories, in clean clothes and orderly habits; and our first advice with regard to the native would be couched somewhat in the same terms as the counsel uttered by Mr. Dick, in regard to David Copperfield, "wash him." There can be no doubt that, at some distant period, the equipage of a Chinaman, and his social surroundings, really possessed some state, and were comely objects to the eye. Now, all is a sham; the retinue is extemporized from the streets, the official chairs are ramshackle, the red umbrella is a tawdry toy. As is the outward show, so is the system of which the pageant is the representative. The ragged regiment that periodically parades the streets of the Foreign Settlement is one out of many signs ut maladministration, and (rick-cry, and deception; and as the Chinese become more influenced by Foreign ideas, they will better npprecinte the hollowness of the pageant. We are all apt to lose sight of those objects that are immediately under our eyes; but a very practical' lesson may be learned from contrasting the orderly cleanly Chinaman in foreign service, with the tatterdemalion who assists' at a native ceremony.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.