10th May.
Iris a wise instinct of the Chinese people to he'd firmly by what they have received from the past, in which their national life and institutions are rooted. Every race, every people, must of course have ancient roots, though their due culture will not of necessity prevent the appearance of new shoots, per-
different from the old. This may haps of species apparently "quite be done by mixing stocks, as ingrafting, of which' the rising Japanese Empire will perhaps remain the world's classic example. If a mass meeting were possible of some of those who in their lifetimes were leaders, for example, in the evolution of the British Empire, and especially ifa select Cabinet were summoned from among them to give their views as to what should be done under the conditions of to-day, if we had to wait for a majority vote of this sort, it is safe to say that the wheels of government would altogether cease to revolve. In China, where the face of its greatest sage was uniformly to the past and his back to the future, this is far more true than elsewhere. In spite of their irrepressible habit of adopting nephews to continue "direct descent," old Chinese families happily run out, the sons and grandsons of rear leaders by a happy stroke of riental wisdom which the Occident might find it advantageous to imitate, inherit the ancestral rank in @ diminyendo scale, until it be-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.