Dennys, March-April, 1875.
The paper entitled "The last of the Chinese," with which the number ops is a very interesting sketch of the closing scenes of the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. The effeminacy of the last of the Sung Emperors had enfeebled the whole body politic, when the Khan of the Mongols determined to invade the wealthy Kingdom which lay so temptingly open at his feet. In describing the then capital of the Empire, Hangchow, only eight years before its downfall, Marco Polo say:
"The people of the land were anything rather than warriors; all their delight was in women, and nought but women; and it was above all with the king himself, for he took thought of nothing else but women, unless it were charity to the poor. In all his dominion there were no horses, nor were the people ever inured to battle, or arms or military service of any kind. Yet uca of Manji is very strong by and all the cities are compassed by sheets of water of great depth, and more than an arbalest-shot in width; #0 that the country never would have been lost had the people but been soldiers. But that is just what they were not, so lost it was." The paper before as opens with a graceful tribute, by Mr. Lister, to the memory of Mr. Bowra, from whose History of Kwangtung it appears to have been written by the two gentlemen in concert, some time before the latter's death. It opens with the death of the last Sung Emperor, in the year 1274, and the nomination of a child only four years old to succeed him on a throne already shaken to its foundation by the weakness of its rulers and. tive imminence of the Mongol attack. An attempt was made by the Empress Dowager to defend Hangchow, but she was embarrassed by traitors, who gave up the city, and was sent with her infant ward to the Mongol capital. Thecentral figure of the succeeding adventures is Wen Ten-tsiang, who alone, among the officers of the fallen Empire, seems to have had honesty or decision of purpose. Before the fall of Hangchow, two of.the Emperor's children had fled into the South; and, under the leadership of Wen, the elder of these was proclaimed Emperor, at Foochow, under the Regency of his mother, one of the late Emperor's concubines, Soon, however, they were driven back into Kwangtung, and their adventures during the close of the hopeless struggle maintained by their adherents, are invested by Mr. Bowra's facile pen with an almost romantic interest. After alternatives of victory and defeat, and the final overthrow and capture of Wen en-tsiang, they were at length driven to Yaishav, a town on the West coast of Kwangtung, of great natural strength, where a last desperate stand was made. We are tempted to quote at length the description of the final attack and the extinction of the last spark of resistance to the invader Aa the tide rose, the renegade commander moved up his ships for a grand attack, the final stroke. Expectation of being seconded from the rear lent energy to the traitor's ind he succeeded in setting the line i breaking, and throwing it into utter confusion. A tremendous storm of wind and rain came on and added to the horrors of the Sight. It befriended the in so far as it enabled Chang Shih-chieh to rally a great part of the fleet, to fight his way out, and to effect a retreat to sea. The Queen was in his charge, and, in the confusion, he probably thought that Lu Hsin-fa was following him with the young Emperor. But Lu Hsin-fu had fied up the river, nor had he fled far before he met the unexpected Mongol fleet coming down. Defeat and carnage were behind, fresh and unbreathed foes, burning for the fight, before, He was hopelessly hemmed in, and saw nothing before him but capture death, The slings and arrows of out. rageous fortune could be suffered no longer; he took the young prince on his back, and plunged with him into the stream, Chang Shih-chieh sailed on unknowing, OF those who did not get away with hi thousands followed the example of Lu Hi. fu, and before night the remnant of the squadron was utterly dispersed. A week after more than ten thousand corpses were floating on the river, The Mongols searched everywhere for the body of the Emperor, and offered enormous rewards for its recovery, but they only succeeded in finding his seal, nor does it appear that the body of Lu Hein-fu was found, The simple inhabitants of the region never believed that their prince had perished, but, for years after, cherished the vain hope that he would come again. There can, however, be little doubt that both he and Lu Hein-fu were drowned, Henceforth the Mongolrule was supreme, and Wen Ten-tsiang, detained " prisoner at Court, after refusing repeated offers of high employ in the invader's servico,—was eventually executed, His name is immortal in Chinese history, literature, and tradition, instance of loyalty and constant, An interesting paper on Chinese Folklore comes next in succession, and prom to be the first only of a series in which the writer contemplates dealing very fully with the subject. We can well fancy that the mine at his disposal is inexhaustible not only. are the Chinese at that singe of civilisation, or sen motion, when super stitution holds full swing, but the art of printing which they have #0 long possessed lias been freely used to petuate all kinds of lore which in the West has greatly passed away. The doings of every Chinaman, from Emperor to peasant, and guided by astrological portents, divinations, &e. oven the more highly educated, who affect to despise them, places practical trust, And in this lies the distinction between Chinese and European folk-lore, In the one case it is either matter only of amused indifference, or of interested research to all but the lowest classes of the population in the other it represents an all-pervading aystem of regulations, believed in or com plied with by high and low alike. The writer quotes numerous cases of similarity of belief in China and in the West. For instance—
The Scottish custom of opening the windows of the room in which a po the soul free egress, is, in some parts of China, paralleled by the practice of making a hole inthe roof. The Lancashire superstition as to the first foot" on New Year's Day ts Chinese counterpart in the expressed to meeting @ woman oF a Budd under such condition. natural that a matter having such importance in Chinese eyes as the birth of of a child, should be surrounded wth portents, and the writer gives a curious list of practices resorted to with a hundred different objects. We should be tempted to quote largely, but for the fear of expanding our review wearisomely, and must be content with the following ide-spread superstition exists at home against rocking a toom," oF cradle. Now, strangely nurses in the South of China have precisely the same belief. A little four-year 0 girl, who is a very intimate acquaintance
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.