Sept. 17.
All Chinese -festivals hai their own suggestiveness. No tone can resist the whimsical charm of Excited Insects, the Poetry of Pure Brightness, or the robust popularity of the Dragon Boats. But among them none casts a greater spell than the Mid-Autumn Festival. "Linked with memories of our own We: ern "harvest homes," it opens up romantic vistas of the past and sets the imagination wa dering ina reverie of gentle association. So, when reformers} re taking away so much, one] is glad to see that they have spared the Mid-Autumn, For one day the Customs cease from taxing and gold-bar speculators need not rack their brains for rumours with which to entrap the gullible. Even the Provisional Court has rest from the unseemly recrimination of rival lawyers. Moon cakes are ex: changed and children hear once more the legend of the Emperor Ming Huang's visit to the moon and the new fashions that he brought back from her palaces for the ladies of his court.
To those who are getting on in life there is ever a growing attraction in Lord Melbourne' favourite maxim, "Why can't yo let it alone?" Such people art not, perhaps, the safest, ce tainly not the most popula: critics of reformers' activities Yet one may wonder, not without reason, whether the new China is altogether wise in trying to abolish so much of the past. Of the wits upon temples and their property it is impossible to speak generally. Probably they are justifiable! enough in some cases, though not in all, But the dethroning of dozens of China's gods and goddesses seems unnecessary and is undoubtedly hateful to the people at large. Superstition is an ugly word, but not necessarily ugly. or harmful in practice. goddess of the kitchen, or for Venere for the ion
ier who secures happy mar-nages, cannot hurt anyone, lief in a pantheon is not the highest form of creed, but it represents something outside the material range of life which is not without its benefits and which people cannot be deprive ed of without sense of loss. At east these old legends and cults make for a certain poetry about existence which to so highly imaginative a people as the Chinese is a necessity.
One waits a little anxiously for what the reformers will put in place of the "superstitious! practices" which they condemn. The reign of stark reason lias been tried again and again and has always failed." French Revolutionists tried it and, even exalted a ballet dancer on the! altar of Notre Dame as the goddess of reason; but the nation was not with them. Bolshe-denounces religion as "th opium of the people," but the Russian instinct for religious practice cannot be destroyed, The most penetrating criticism of the new learning in China is that it has taken away the old ethical standards and put _nothing in their place and to thia deficiency much of the present unrest and discontent is traceable. After all, a civilization is to be tested not by what it does but by what it thinks, and of none is this truer than of the ancient Chinese civilization. In material things it fell short of that of other lands, but in mental poise and self-sufficiency it had no superior. It may be retorted that the cult of ths kitchen god and similar practices had nothing to do: with. this serene cast of thought. But it quite impossible to divide one form of influence from another, and beliefs at which°a Hanlin could afford to smile might have areal value for the peasant. As China's superstitions will die natural death. Meanwhile, bee cause a thing is old does not necessarily mean that it should be destroyed, and the festivals of China, with all' that imply, are of the things can Least afford to forgo, MR, MANTELL AND;
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.