A State paper lately published in the Peking Gazelte is plonsantly associated with one of the brightest chapters in Chinese history, and at the same time casts a curious light upon the condition of public education at the present day. It carries us back to the Limes of the earlier Emperors of the Sung dynasty, when China was rich in commentator and historians, jast as she waa rich in poets and cultivator of belles-letives daring the period of the T'augs. It was in the reign of Kao Tsung, founder of the house of Sung, that Chu the great philosopher and commentator, first saw the light. He was a native of Pakion, and endowed with a singularly precocious and enquiring intellect. Like most of the grent scholars of China he entered the service of the Government, and it was only daring his leisure hours that he devoted him. self to those studies that have made his came so famous, He was by no means an orthodox Confucianist at first, In common with many youths of promise, who ha shocked their friends by exhibiting doneies at the outset of their career, Chu Hsi showed a strong predilecfor the heterodox classics of Bud-diiism und Taoism. The fancy, however, did not last long. He soon relinquished all such unfashionable lore, and planged into the stady of those books which were and still are considered the only improving subjects of w young man's attention. He was gifted by nature with remarkably clear, fine style, which he cultivated assiduously; he lind a strong penchant for metaphysi read history, as 80 few of his country.
seem to do, in a philosophical spirit; and the strength avd ori ity of his mind wore not long in bringing him into pablic notice. The old Jesuit Fathers have called him the Bayle of China, "Comme ce fame ax critique," wrote one of them, "il troupe bien des oni et bien des non; et les cleve sur des pyramides de raisonuements, de faite, de sophismes: quite & se contredire an besom, et a se refuter Lai memo fante de mémoire. Comme Ini, encore, ila overt La porte an pyrrhonisme, a abus de In métaphysique, an mépris des ancient, et an libertinage de cour et Veaprit." We do not intend, however, to enter upon a criticism of the great Chinese critic. Our business with him today is simply as the hermit of the White Deer Grotto near the Poyang Lake, and the virtual founder of the College which exists upon its site to-day. It wasin this sylvan retreat that Lo meditated upon the mysteries of good and evil, that he pored over the works of the ancient sages, that he edited, annotated, and partially re wrote the great national History of Sze-ma Kuang, and compiled those commentaries upon the Confucian Classics which have been accepted as the orthodox standard by nearly every Chinese scholar since. The site of the White Deer Grotto is therefore holy ground, and no more fitting monument to the memory of its illustrious tenant could be erected on it than the College whioh still perpetuates its name, But, like ery thing else in China, the institu. tion is in a very critical condition, and the Emperor has been making enquiries about it. The Governor of Kiangsi is good enough to inform His Majesty,—what every Chinese schoolboy ought to know—that the Pai Lu Tang Shu Yuan, or College of the White Deer Grotto, in Nan-ob'ang Fu, "was founded by the eminent philosopher and come mentator Abu Hsi," and that the Grotto itself " was the favourite retreat of the philosopher daring his hours of meditation when holding office as Governor of Nan-k'ang." It is a little surprising that the Governor of Kiangei should think it necessary to enter into these dots: What follows, however, is more interesting. The institution, which he describes as the first of the four great Colleges of the Empire, received an endowment of lauds situated in the neighbourhood, which for ® consider. able period brought in an income of Tis, 18,000 perannam, Of late years, however, the property has much dimiished, owing to the ravages of the ing rebels, and in order to meet the distresses of the tenants their rents wore reduced about twenty por cout, Those are paid with commendable regularity, bat are only just sufficient to meet the current expenses of the College; the consequence being that the whole place is in such @ dilapidated condition that the examinations supposed to be held there have no existence in- reality Funds, of course, are forthcoming to effect the necessary repairs; but ie not almost inconceivable that an one cient university, the first of the four great Colleges in the Empire, enjoying all the prestige of having been founded by one of the greatest scholars the country has produced, should actually have fallen into such a state of decay that no examinations eau take place in it, and that without anybody knowing or caring anything about the matter P Had a Chinese been told that such a thing was possible in the barbarous regions of the West, he might have been excused for believing it; but here in the very land of literature, whose eoholars are go proud that they will not allow the existence of anything worth calling scholarship outside the Four Seas, that a College in commemoration
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.