A coop many books are at present published in regard to China and the Chinese, and perhaps it is not for us to suggest that they are not on the whole quite as good as those which used to appear on the same fruitful and inexhaustible theme. Yet we may venture the observation that it is highly doubtful whether any considerable number of them, or possibly any one of them, will be to any extent read and commented upon half-a century hence. In the fifties' the number' of those well enough informed about the Celestial Empire and its people to enable their printed comments to command a market, was, to say the least, very much smaller than is now the case, and the European interest in China was fitful and best shallow. Among the British writers of that day, one alone stands out "grand, gloomy, and peculiar," whose books, although unhappily almost forgotten except by the curious or the learned, were at the time important, and are still worth careful $08 Meadows, long an Interpreter, and examination. Mr. Thomas Taylor later a Consul in H.B.M. Service, was probably the phical of the countless writers who have dealt with China, and his "Chinese and Their Rebellions" Temains a monument to his learning, his diligence, and his eccentricity. Why there are no such works produced now, it would be perhaps ungracious to inquire, and we by no means wish to imply that some of Mr. Meadows? successors in the service have not in their possession pens as sharp as his, and with a larger supply of acrid drugs with which on occasion to moisten them. For one thing there is so much known about China in this our highly favoured day, that any man who should with Mr, Meadow: imperfectly concealed egotism undertake to illumive the universe, would be at once laughed at, even if he attracted the attention which he deserved. In his main work Consul Meadows shows very little literary skill, so far as arrangement goes, since he has comprised between two stout covers and on more than 650 pages the substance of what should have been three different works; a treatise on the origin, growth, nature, and prospects of the then current Lai Ping Rebellion; an elaborate philosophical discussion of the nature of the Chinese theories of heaven, earth, and man, with excellent elucidating comments and explanations; and a wholly original and striking essay on civilisation, of which he gives the first definition which we remember ever to have come across, and which (after the lapse of more than a quarter of a century since first meeting it) still seems admirable and almost complete. The first two of these essays are, however, tangled up in the most singular and confusing manner, But this by the way. Like many others in his position then and since Mr. Meadows was an intelligent observer of events, but unlike them, he was by no means reluctant to take the world into his confidence, and to make numerous and often highly detailed suggestions as to what the said world ought to do under the circumstances then existing. Mr, Meadows said in effect "Look here! I know a great deal about philosophy, about the origin and the meaning of words, and about men and things. I know history, and I know what is going on, ergo, 1 know what is about togo on. Listen to me, or it will be the worse for you, ud the universe,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.