Yue phenomenon of the persistence of error is one of the those things which have gently exercised philosophers from Solomon to A.K.H.B. Like most other phenomena it can be accounted for in various ways. One, of course, is that truth, though it may be sometimes stranger than fiction, is not as a rule half as amusing; and mankind somehow always prefers an interesting story ben trovato, to a dull one, however vera, Then, again, it is always easier to repeat whol some predecessor has said, than to verify your references; and pleasanter too, unless you happen to be one of those perverse individuals who delight in upsetting all the charming traditions of our childhood. Perhaps in this last sentence we have condemned ourselves; but even amiable indulgence to tradition has, or ought to have, its limits. Six or seven years ago the Daily Teleoraph, writing & propos of the Peking Gazette observed:—"The Chinese name of the paper is the King Pau, which means apitol Sheet. It is one of the most enterprising journals in existence, having lately taken to issuing three editions daily. The one in the morning is called the Hsing Pau which means Business Sheet, that in the forenoon Skuen Pau or Official Sheet, which contains all the fashionable intelligence; that in the evening the Titani Pau or Country Sheet; and all three issues are edited by members of the Hanlin College."
We ventured at the time to point out, deferentiallyenough, certain inaccuracies in this statement, in the hope, per hay too presumptuous, that it might be modified. But apparently its inherent attractiveness appealed too strongly to the scrap collectors, who are now doing their best to stereotype it. In the Cornhill of January last, under the very appropriate heading of "Our small ignorances," (more appropriate in this instance than its author intended, or was aware,) crops Uy in the same legend, th altered and abashed, There i says this corrector of ignorances, "in existence a weekly journal of great antiquiry. It isseid to have first appeared in A.D. 911 and is called the King Pau or Chief Sheet and is published at Peking. In its early days it was irregular in its dates of publication, but in 1351 it became hebdomadal, and in 1882 assumed a new shape, Three editions are published in the day containing matter of different kinds, and are called respectively the Business, the Official and the Country sheets. Their combined circulation amounts to about fourteen thousand." Here the story is seen settling down into historical shape, and the year 1882 will doubtless presently become embodied in the Dictionary of Dates sub voce Peking Gazette. It seems hopeless to protest; home readers, where China is concerned, either hear nothing of, or care nothing for, what is written by men qualified by long residence and careful study to speak of things Chinese; but they follow readily any literary jackdaw who, after spending a few weeks jin the Far East, will spread his, or her stolen and badly-adjusted feathers on the bookstalls. The origin of this particular myth about the Peking Gazette them is not very clear. irani Pau, the Country Sheet," is evidently the official copy of the Gazette which is sent through the ¢'i-tang or courier posts to the provincial governments, and which the perverse ingenuity of some news purveyor has contorted into "an evening edition for the country." What the Hsing-pau jand the Skuen-pao stand for it is perhaps waste of time to speculate.
Other small ignorances' concerning China have crystallized past solution, Such is the rendering of the Yang-tse by 'Son of the Ocean.' The idea is so poetical that it really seems almost sacri-Jege when time after time some sinologue protests that Yangtse is merely a territorial name, that has as much, and no more to do with Ocean as Reading has to do with books. 'The Flowery Land' for Chung-hwa-kowo isa further case in point; as hua when (as constantly) applied by the Chinese to themselves in contrast to' the outer tribes,' means not ' flowery' but cultured.' ''I'he Celestial Empire' is, again, largely a misnomer, Tien-tsz, commonly and conveniently translated the Son of Heaven,' is properly he whom Heaven looks on as a son,' watches over, in other words, with a parental rey From this use of @ien is derived tien chao as an epithet of the reigning dynasty; from an unfortunate translation of @en chao comes the Celestial Empire thence the still more unfortunate term of celestials' as applied to Chinamen, Our too copious vocabulary has infileted on us a of iteration or tautology that (as any one who reads the account of a cricket match in a sporting journal will gloomily admit) becomes in time a curse. If the inhabitants of China are called 'Chinese' in one sentence, they must not be called 'Chinese' in the next. 'This involves a demand for synonyms, and hence the use of 'Celestial' and 'Mongolian.' 'Sons of Han' is newer, and more correct; but it is strange that the name by which the mass of the emigrants abroad call themaelves,—men of Iang,—has never come to the fore. Probably it is not sufficiently ludicrous as it stands for the sportive hoodlum.
Another very persistent error, and a very unaccountable one, regards the length of Chinese plays. How often do we see statements that a Chinese play takes days, weeks, or even months in the formance; that it commences grandfather, and ends only with his with the birth of the hero's Kors idson's death at the of a hunand ten. We are all familiar with the twaddle that is let loose on this subject, and the countless allusions, direct and indirect, to it. Yet what foundation has it? As a matter of fact a single Chinese play that. will keep the boards for hours..is unheard of; an hour is much too long ay to allow for the ordinary plays, while if all were acted by book and without extemporised padding, ten {or twenty minutes apiece would see through. Perhaps the explanation of the popular error lies in the fact that there are in the unadulterated Chinese drama only a limited number of characters, as for instance the hero, the {heroine (not always necessary, and as often as often as not the beroe's mother), an official, a messenger, and 80 on, These have each their stereotyped cos~ tume, which is the same for all plays,—so that the hero in one play is to all outward seeming the same as the hero of every other. Then there is °no drop scene, or, to untrained western eyes, any perceptible pause or change between one play and the next, Hence the first foreign' spectators of a travelling Chinese troupe came to the very excusable conclusion that it was a single performance at which they saw the crowd gazing for the best part of three days, "The fact was duly recorded and enlarged upon, and now it will, we are convinced, be quite useless for the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, or for any other body, or individual, who knows anything about the subject, to endeavour to upset this belief in the length of Chinese play. As for the numerous other popular errors anent China there {will never be wanting writers to perpetuate them, just as there still are men who believe that the earth is flat, and that it is as impious as it is useless to attempt to get to the North Pole.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.