Tue western student of Chinese ceremonies and customs will find in the Hwa Pao a storehouse full enough and fairly accessible. It is true that the type is so minute as to be a weariness to most eyes, and the style painfully orate and all but incomprehensible to the average foreign reader. Still, this failing is common, unfortunately, to the whole range of Chinese literature outside mere business documents such as despatches or bills of lading, whereas the Hora Pao has the signal advantage over the ordinary newspaper or Tocal gazetteer of being illustrated, and on the whole very well illustrated. It does not do, of course, to take the pictures on faith, and indeed (if you provide him with a second copy and yourself with a pipe) it is always advisable to call in the stale but profitable Asien sheng, and get him to explain matters at length; he is sure to be able to supplement the text by notes of his own, which if not always trustworthy are certain to be entertaining. There
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.