Tue letter of a Correspondent at Ti tsin of which we gave an abstract the other day presents us with " very unsatisfactory picture of the youths who arrived last September from the United States. It may be remembered that ave, in common with several of our contemporaries in America and elsewhere, took very hopeful views of the permanent inflaence of western life upon these Chinese Inds, and the reflex influence likely to be exerted by them wherever they might be situated in their native country. "The Educational Mission," wrote a San Francisco paper, in words that we both quoted and endorsed, "though now in rains, has not utterly perished from the earth. Its influence survives; no Imperial decree can abolish that." It must be acknowledged that this prediction has been falsified, From what we hear from other sources besides the one we refer above, we judge that all the bright and promising ideas which the students imported some months ago are being slow. Jy crushed out of them by the deadening influences of Chinese officialism. Some may be led to think, perhaps, that the attempt to graft the mental indepondence of the West upon a Chinese stock is in itself a vain and hopeless task. Everything goes smoothly as long as a young Chinaman is surrounded by Western influences, but the moment he returns to his native country he relapses into the state of mental apathy. and sloth which is his inheritance by birth. There are many stories. oalculated to bear out this idea, We have probably all rend of the little savage of Tahiti, who, taken to England when a child, received a first-class eduontion, grow up a polished youth, took his degree at Cambridge, and afterwards, when at the age of twenty or thereabouts, on making a voyage to his native laud, threw off his clothes, jumped over the side of the steamer into the ses, swam ashore, and ran about the woods in a state of nature. This and other stories of the @ class are frequently quoted as evidence of the strength of the natural and inherited instincts of uncivilized man, instincts which are sufficiently strong to over= come even the refining associations of almost a life-time, Such, it may be said, is the case with the Chinese students from America. They took kindly to the comforts and refinements of the West as long as they were there, but no sooner do they return home than they sink contentedly once more into the shiftless, squalid ways of China, Now we do not believe in ti It is not that the old Adam is atrong within them that better influences have gradually away, but that they are not having a fair chance, They must miss many things most cruelly, In America, they had the advantage of studying under practised, judicious, and learned. professors, who understood the art of teaching. Here they are placed under men who are mero theorists, and who content themselves with inculcating the driest bones of instruction, according to rule of thumb. In America they were surrounded by an English-speaking community, from constant intercourse with whom they acquired the difficult art of colloquia. lism, adulterated, it is to be feared, with a somowhnt large admixture of slang, but still true conversational English, Here they have no such advan. dialect is described to ongeries of gram. magical monstrosities, which may be correct from a Lindley Murray point of view, bat which cannot be called good vernacular. Nor are they s0 well in health as they were when they first arrived. Than they were ruddy and stout, witha pleasant briskness.of manner: we hear that now they are growing thin and sallow, and degenerating physically under the poor rice-diet of their fellow-countrymen, It is well known, of course, that in obedience to some unauthenticated tradition of Confucianism, no good follower of the Sage ever touches beef; while milk is re garded with disgust by a pure-bred Chi-Who calls it ' white blood,' and considers its use by his Mongolian neighbours as ample evidence of their uucivilised condition. Regrettable as all this is, it is perhaps only what might
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.