Brans are at present under discussion, says "Engineering," for opening anew direct Tine of communication overland between China and Russia, It is proposed to build a line from Samarkand to Hankow vii Chodschend, Margitan, and through one of the Pamirs, It will be necessary to drive a tunnel through the Kashgar mountains. From Kashgar, which is the centre of the transit trade between East Turkestan and Russian Central Asia, the railway will either pass through the broad Tarim valley or go ina south-eastern direetion to Chatan, on to schortschen and Tschorjolyk at the Lobnor lake. From there the line will have to be carried through one of the passes in the Altyn mountains to the Tsaidam plateau, along the Semenow mountains, past the Kuku Nor luke to the Hoangho valley and the town of Lanchou, which is the capital of the province of Kansu, which boasts a population of 11,000,000 of souls. From Lanchou it is proposed to carry the railway through the towns of Fenghsiang, Hsi-hsiang and Hsiangon to the province of Shensi, with 9,000,0 0 inhabitants, From this province, the oilway. is to proceed through the Hankiang river valley. to Hankow, a centre for itlund Chinese trade. Hankow has steamer connection with the rich province of Szechuan, which has a population of 46,000,000. he railway, if constructed, will no doubt prove of immense importance to Russian trad", and the Russian Government is understood to be greatly interested in the scheme, Ose of the most eminent, and certainly the most widely known, of Oriental scholars was Professor Max Muller, whose death is announced to-day. Although ull his riper years were spent at Oxford, this great Scholar was a German, born at Dossau in 1823. His father had gained considerable fame as a poet, At Leipzig, perhaps the greatest of German Universities, Max Muller laid the foundation of the erudition which "afterwards brought him fame, studied under the best teachers in Europe, ing particular attention to Arabic, ian and Sanskrit, and devoting much of his energy to the abstract philosophy with which Germany was then satiat-d, After a year in Pavis, the young student went to England to see certain Sanskrit manuscripts, and there he met Baron Bunsen, the Prussian Minister in London, who urged him not to return to Germany. The reception Max Muller received from English scholars could not have bee warner. Ilo was engaged by the East India Company to publish his edition of the Rig-Veda at their expense, and in 1850, two years after his arrival, he was made Taylorian Professor at Oxford. In 1858 he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls' College, and ten years later the Universit founded a chair ut Comparative Ph for his benefit, to utone for a slight he had received when theological prejudice had prevented his appointment to the chair of Sanskrit. So well was he treated in England that he refused an appointment as Professor of Sanskrit in Strasburg, by which it
soil. It is greatly to the credit of the was hoped to tempt him back to his native English University that those who had influence were s" ready to lay hands upon, and so reluctant to release their grasp of, an alien scholar. Perhaps the work of Max Muller most interesting to people in the Far East was his study of Buddhism as it exists in Japan, A number of Japanese priests had been sent to him learn Sanskrit, and through them he discovered the existence in the Land of the Rising Sun of ancient Sanskrit writings, older than any in India. Max Muller was as much interested in mythology as in Oriental literature, and his researches in both subjects will not soon lose their importance. In his more speculative moods,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.