Mar, 31.
Manx of our readers must} have read with much pleasure the delightful article on the True Scholar by Dr. Ku Hung-ming which we published in a recent umber, In it the Chinese] scholar of the old type, with love of learning for learning' sake and his dislike of the glare of publicity, was contrasted, much to the latter's disadvantago, with his successor of the present generation who loves parades and slogans and noisy tea meetings. Dr, Ku quoted Confucius as his authority for his ideal, but the phraseology of the English Bible peeped out now and then in his rhythmic prose, proving that the ideal scholur—and his opposing type—is o universal and not a national character. Dr. Ka would surely approve Austin Dobson's description of the beau ideal English' gentleman of lei-euro and of letters may be that he sould not] count, The sires and song to Jesse's)
unt Ho liked the Sermon on the Mount And more, he read it.
For the struggle between the mow and the old is as ancient as the world itself. It is Yin and ong, Ormuzd and Abriman, Light and Darkness, hoary age! and debonair youth: it is always! 'a drawn battle and is renewed in every clime with every new generation. For more than two thousand years the victory lay with th old in the unchanging East. China. was an old man's paradise, but now youth i clamorously asserting itself and] i Dr. Ku sings the swan song of the dignified. literati who ate fading into forgetfulness.
Tt ie true that those old ecbolers of China were wonderfal men. They were men Jotters to their finger tips, often pedants and sometimes learned fools, but on occasion they came Yorth from their retirement and proved themselves men of war og well as students. It is now sixty years since the Taiping army spread terror and desolation throughout the larger part} of the Chinese Empire, but there are still old men living who recall the extremity of trees the country: was in when the Emperor "Hsien Feng summoned Meng Kuo-fan from his study to Jead the Imperial troops. Tseng, and his lieutenants, Tso Chung: tang and Li Hung-chang, were '4g remarkable a trio as any nation can show. They were first of all scholars but, just Cromwell turned his Generals into Admirals, -so the Emperor turned his best scholars into Generals and they justified hie belief. in their ° powers. Peong Kyo-fan was a scholar, a philosopher, the author of more han -a hundred volumes of Aiterature and a great. soldier. Tso Chung-tang fought first in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.