speech of Peking is smooth and agreeable to the enr. It has been subjected to the refining influence resulting from the meeting together of dialects from every quartier of the empire. The isolated roughnesses of each are rubbed off by contact and the typo produced is that of an easy and pleasing vernacular adapted for intercourse with persons of all sorts. These persons employ on their arrival every variety of brogue, but for the sake of general intelligibility all peculiarly local features are unoonsoiously drop-pedas useless. Asa pebble when broken of a mountain cliff is rough, and bounded by sharp angles and sides, but after being carried by the rushing water down the slope of the mountain to the plain has become to some extent round and smooth; 80 it is, with looalisms of language and of pronunciation. Peking, as the residence of a multitude of official people, and the centre of the refining influences of the Court las come to have the best dialect in Ohina.
There is however in the Peking dialect an abundance of slang, which has sprung up in the promiscuous freedom of markets, fairs and ten-shops. Cart drivers, policemen, greengrocers, and general hucksters, tax collectors, door Keepers, domestic servants, soldiers, anda host of others have all had a share in making slang, and are perpetually using it. Only avery few Manobu official terms have been introduced into the Peking dialect. They are such as pa-tu-lu, a brave man," and pi-ti "a writer." The one is an hovonr bee stowed, the other a scribe with certain duties, Although so large a number of Manohins reside in Peking the language they speak is Chinese, and if proclar sued in the Manobu language, they are also issued in Ohinese, In the families Chinese is spoken. In schools the two Inngunges are taught together, but Chinese studies absorb the moat time, A certain proportion of officers must know sufficient Marion to employ it both in converaation and in translating documents. The number of those persons mot with in the Peking streets who oan speak Mauch Suently is extremely few. No Manchu boys when playing together ever utter " word of Manchu, The languages of Coren, Mongolia, and Tibet are spoken to some extent in Poking. The Mongol lamaseries in the city are five. Of these, the largest, Yung-ho Kung, is very near the Confucian Temple, More than 1,200 Mongols reside here. They are either pupils, teachers, or ordinary lamas, and are divided into four faoulties,—metaphysics, medicine, astronomy, and charms. Here, and in the other four Jamaseries, Mongol is spoken, and principally that of the tribes near Peking. While Manchu is taught in schools, Mongol is a living language, showing no sign in its native laud of decay, It there exhibits such vigour that Chinese colonists in ome loonlities speak better Mongol than they do Chinese. In Peking some of the re. sident Jamns speak Chinese with perfect command of accent and idiom, but with these exceptions there remain about two thousand Mongolian speaking Mongols who spank Chinese imperfectly. The Mongol Bannermen, like the Mancha Bannermen, spank Chinese exclusively. There is a small Turkish colony, but the knowledge of Turkish
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.