Tas Shanghai Hsien has lately adjudged a case illustrating some peculiar Chinese customs—so peculiar in fact, and so essentially Chinese, that home readers will be strengthened in the prevalent conviction that everything Celestial is in contradiction to everything European, The case is matrix monial in its inception and in its end. ing, and social in the intermediate stages. First, we have plurality of wives. A Cantonese having business relations at other ports, rejoices in a domestic establishment both at Shanghai and Canton. His wife in Shanghai has a foster-daughter, who la the heroine in the tale before. us. The hero is a play-actor named Yang Yeh-lin—clever, good looking and fast; high in professional reputation, and scarcely less remarkable for a handsome person. To seo Yang seems to have been, for the ladies who went to his theatre, to love him; and scandal says his bonnes fortunes were numerous. The young lady in question did not escape his fascination; she saw him, and fell lovesick and lorn, refused food, moped, and acted in short very much as novelists tell us young ladies usually do in such cases. This at least is the Yang explanation of the complication that ensued. Another tale is that the mother herself was smitten by the handsome actor, and, in furthering the marriage which was eventually brought about, was acting from other than purely mater. nal sentiment; the daughter's youth was to compensate for the mother's defects. We incline. however to treat this as pure scandal, and to believe the simpler narrative. But however this may be, it is certain that, during the father's absence at Foochow, nego-dations were opened, all formalities gone through, the marriage con-eluded, and mother and daughter removed to the residence of Yang-yeh-lin. Foreigners would think that, in the absence of the father, no interference in such a purely domestic arrangement could: be possible, But this is China; and it seems that sundry Cantonese friends of the absentee took upon themselyes—and were admitted by the Shanghai Hsien to have a right—to oppose the transaction, Their hostility was directed against Yang, who was arrested—apparently on a charge of abduction—together with his bride, the latter apparently rather as a witness than a culprit in the matter. And we invite attention to the Magistrate's decision, as illustrating both peculiarity of Chinese custom and the high degree of civilisation which we are so often called on to admire.
Knowing nothing of Chinese law, we can, of course, hardly question its legality; we can only remark on the points which oppose themselves to foreign ideas of right, and seem consistent rather with the savagery of a Red Indian then with judicial procedure.
The whole case is, as we said before, illustrative of Chinese life and manners; and it is essential to explain at the outset, that the profession of a play-actor is in itself degraded. Play-actors and barbers rejoice in the enviable dis-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.