Firing upon British ships in Chinese inland waters is not new, and there is therefore nothing to get excited about in the news that a British river vessel in south China has been made the target of rifles wielded by peasants who board the ship are to be deplored, and the authorities will "doubtless see. that Proper compensation is made to the relatives of the Chinese quartermaster who was killed and the foreigners who were wounded in the s. Tallee on the West River. In connection with navigation in south China waters comes one of those "believe-it-or-not" stories which are told in those spots where the tongue is sometimes 'The tatest issue of the "Pion Hsin Monthly" contains brilliant article by Dr. John C, H. Wu on "Shakespeare as a Taoist." The title of the article is enough to make the ordinary' reader pause, while to a real student of Shakespeare it will be startling. Dr, Wu, as his carefully documented references show, is a Shakespearean enthusiast, having had the good fortune of being introduced to the great dramatist, poet, and philosopher at an age at which he could appreciate him—not at the age the average British schoolboy makes his acquaintance, when he is rammed down the boy's throat in the sine way as a laxative medicine and bout "og much resented, Shake speare's plays, to digress a'moment, were written for, and presented to, fan adult audience, and it hag always Seemed a ite. unreasonable expect a class of children to take them at their full value, However that may be, Dr. Wu gives the Feaction of a widely-read Chinese to these British masterpieces, and shows how the conditions outlined by the sage of Stratford-on-Avon may recall 0 the Chinese mind those prevailing, during the period of the. "Three Kingdoms, and, most Important, how much of the sage's philosophy recalls that of Laotse, founder of Taoism. The resemblances between the philosophies of the two men is strike ing, as noted in the article, and the quotations made from both to. back up the resemblance are extremely: well chosen. The question of Shake. spenre's plagiarism from the master who preceded him by so "many hundreds of years does not arise: in the first place it was impossible at that Ume, ud in the second, there can be no plagiarism of universal ideas. The common ground. of the two men is, according {0 Dr. Wu, the subtle idea of the permeation Jor interpenetration of opposites, He.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.