Tue Chinesohave obtained, as we recently saw with some degree of plausibility as to the genuineness and propriety of their claim to the title, the oredit of being a learned nation. They have made the acquirement of knowledge, or rather of scholarship which is a very different thing from knowledge, the passport to rank and office. But we think that the Ohinese who read the writings of the great masters with avy actual enjoyment, are not numerous. This is em assertion which must be made with a certain degree of reserve, and with ample allowance for the incompleteness of our knowledge of China, yet it is apparently trae that a love of reading for the sake of reading is not so common in this country as is generally imagined. The Classies lead to promotion, and therefore the Classics are studied; but that there is in the Chinese mind a warm and appreciative love of literature for its own sake i question which may be regi still debateable. The end which the European scholar who deserves the name has before him, is the acquirement of knowledge and the enlargement of the field which lies before bim in the department to which be devotes his attention through the working hours of many working years. The rewards that are held out to literature in Europe are so uncertain and precarious that there is little chance of a man mistaking the means for the end. But in Chins, mero book knowledge and proficiency in the subjects taken up for examination have the immediate tangible rewards of wealth and rank.
When the degree is taken, the graduate has no special inducement to open a book. He passes at once into the cares, engagements, and temptations of official life, atid possibly though he is bound to speak of the Classics with respect in his published documents, he cherishes a very natural feeling of dis. gust for the writings over which he spent so much valuable time and so much mental activity. The prize is secured, the goal is won, and the means by which he secured that prize, and the avenue through which he had to pass to gain that goal, are not regarded with any great satisfaction in the retrospect. It is not recorded what wore the feelings of the man who was told by Lord Palmerston to learn Spanish to qualify himself for an appointment, and then, at the ex. piration of the year of labour, heard that somebody else had got the appointment, and that his only compensation was having acquired the power of reading Don Quizote in the original. But at all events we may believe that, though very much disappoitited, ho had at least Don Quizot in reserve. The Chinaman who is told to study the Classics to got place, and faile to get it, has certainly the compensation of having acquired the ability to road the Classics; but he will in all likelihood go back to them in order that he may master their intricades with sufficient thoroughness to avoid being plucked again; in a word, he still toiling at books in order to gain @ certain social and official position, not because he has a love of learning for its own sake. Of course, in all countries where the "cram" system prevails, th a danger of this mistake; but in Ching it is not a possibility, it is almost m necessity of the peculiar pluck which education holds in the country, and is a result of of the education itself. literature does not here, as in European countries, bring forth a perpetual succession of new works. The area over which Chines thought is permitted to travel sternly limited. There is no opportunity for many-sided intellectual activity. The old models must be followed, not only in style but in subject matter. This is a most import+ ant point to bear in mind. We have fortunately, in our own tongue, certain models of consummate and peculiar excellence as regards literary form, but our subjects are varied to an unlimited extent, and therefore scholarship is a living active thing, not @ means to's material and often sordid end.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.