highest degree is also competed for at Peking. (See Article on Examinations). No knowledge of letters in general is required of the candidates, though the Literary Chancellor, before conferring the title of Siu-tsai on them, tests them on their literary attainments.' What is required for a successful pass is muscle, as shown in the lifting of heavy weights, swordsmanship, and skill in archery. The latter is shown both on foot and on horseback. A straight trench, a foot or two in depth and wide enough for a pony to run in comfortably, is dug in the parade ground, and, mounted on horseback, the aspirant for military honours gallops or trots at a brisk pace along this. As the pony has simply to go straight along the trench, the horseman is able to devote his whole attention to his archery. Provided with a sufficient number of arrows he thus swiftly passes the targets, three in number and about fifteen or twenty feet distant from him as he passes, and lets fly an arrow at each, the distance between them being so fixed as to give him time to pull an arrow from his quiver and fix it on the string. A gong is beaten at each target, on a successful hit being made, to apprise the examiner who is seated in a pavilion at the end of the course.

Though the successful candidates are rewarded with the same degrees, if one may be allowed to use the term, given to civilians, yet, as it is merely bodily strength and a quick eye which gain them these distinctions, the people, who most wisely do not value military distinctions, attach but little honour to such a military officer is considered to be of a much inferior grade to a civil one. The naval officers are selected from the same successful candidates. As writer has well said: No knowledge of tactics, gunnery, engineering, fortifications, or even letters in general, seems to be required of them; and this explains the inefficiency of the army, and the low estimation its officers are held in.' An acquaintance with the theories of Sun-tsz, Wu-tsz, Sz-ma, and other venerable and antique authors, is expected of candidates for a military degree. These are a study for the philosopher and disciplinarian rather than for the tactician.'

The Chinese is not a fighting animal. Pitted against Europeans, his tactics have been often like those of the native dog-much bluster, but little done, and casily driven off. It is said Chinese soldiers are brave in flight, for 'brave' is written on the back of their jackets, but it is also written in front, and when properly drilled, armed, and led, they are not wanting in courage, as the Ever Victorious Army under General Gordon gave proof. Besides, their history is as full of brave deeds and desperate valour on the field of battle as that of any other nation.

The following estimate of the qualities of the Chinese as soldiers may prove of interest in this connection:

'The old notion is pretty well got rid of, that they are at all a cowardly people when properly paid and efficiently led; while the regularity and order of their habits, which dispose them to peace in ordinary times, give place to a daring, bordering upon recklessness, in times of war. Their intelligence and capacity for remembering facts make them well fitted for use in modern warfare, as do also the coolness and calmness of their disposition. Physically they are on the average not so strong as Europeans, but considerably more so than most of the other races of the East; and on a cheap diet of rice, vegetables, salt fish, and pork, they can go through a vast amount of fatigue, whether in a temperate climate or a tropical one, where Europeans are ill-fitted for exertion. Their wants are few; they have no caste prejudices, and hardly any appetite for intoxicating liquors. Being of a lymphatic or lymphatic-bilious temperament, they enjoy a remarkable immunity from inflammatory disease, and the tubercular diathesis is little known amongst them.'

The soldiers are often employed in China in duties which would be considered by Western military authorities as outside their proper functions. Construction of the Government railway in Formosa, building walls, and even scavenging may be given as examples of the extra military labours which they are called upon to perform at times.

Books recommended.-Mayers's Chinese Government.'' Account of the Army of the Chinese Empire,' by Sir Thos. Wade in Chinese Repository,' Vol. XX, pp. 250, 300 and 363. ***Mémoires sur les Chinois," tom. VII. gives a translation into French of the Chinese text books for military candidates, accompanied by remarks upon movements adorned with numerous engravings illustrating both arms and armed array.' 'Die chinesische Armee, von Major a. D. Pauli,' an article in Schorers Familienblatt' Heft 7, 1892. China, von-cinem früheren Instructeur in der chinesischen Armee,' Leipzig, 1892, a small pamphlet, containing some ten pages on the Chinese Army.

ART-Painting is still in a backward stage in China; the laws of perspective, and light and shade, are almost unknown, though the former is occasionally, to a slight extent, honoured with a recognition. Height usually represents distance in a Chinese painting, that is to say, distant objects are put at the top of the picture, and nearer ones below them, while but little difference is made in the size. As regards light and shade, no shading is put into many Chinese landscapes, though M. Paléologue states that native artists have sometimes attained to the expression of the most artistic and delicate effects of light and shade, instancing the grand landscape school of the Tang, dynasty as producing perfect works under this class. The arrangement of objects, and the grouping of persons in natural attitudes, would appear not to be taught according to our ideas on the subject. Symmetry is the object aimed at; the subsidiary parts. are treated with as much care as the principal; the smallest details are elaborated with as much minuteness as the most important. Figures are nearly always represented full-faced; and the heads are often stuck on at a forward angle of fortyfive degrees to the rest of the body; this being the scholar's habitual attitude and one indicative of much study. What the Chinese delineator considers of prime importance is the representation of the status occupied by the subject: as his rank in the official service, or grade in the literary corps, or social position. The presentation of a living, feeling soul, revealed in its index, the face, sinks into utter insignificance in comparison with the exposition of the external advantages of rank and fortune, or of the tattered rags of the old beggar fluttering in the breeze. Rough outline sketches, in ink, of figures and landscapes are much admired. In these, impossible mountains, chaotic masses of rock, flowers, trees, and boats, are depicted in such a manner as to call forth but little enthusiasm from the Western observer. As draftsmen their forte lies in taking the portrait of some single portion of nature's handiwork. Many of these they have analysed with great care, and so well studied as to hit off a likeness with a very few strokes of the pencil * *. There is a peculiarity

*

C

among the Chinese which has risen from the command they have over the pencil-they hold it in nearly a perpendicular direction to the paper, and are therefore able, from the delicacy of its point, to draw lines of the greatest fineness, and, at the same time, from the elastic nature of the hairs, to make them of any breadth they please. The broad strokes for the eyelash and the beard are alike executed by a single effort of the pencil.' It has been pointed out that the exigencies of Chinese writing demand an education of the eye and hand, analogous to that required in designing. The handling of the hair brush the Chinese pen-every day gives a facility and readiness of touch and expression.

The Chinese artist has learned a lesson which has only within the last few years been understood by us in our natural history museums-he copies all the parts of a bird in detail, and then, it has been aptly said, he studies the attitudes, and the peculiar passions of which attitudes are the signs, and thus represents birds as they are in real life, *** though they may be rudely executed in some of their details. Nor is this fidelity confined to birds alone, neither is it a new advance in their art, as we find it recorded of Ts'ao Fuh-hing, a famous painter of the third century, that, having painted a screen for the Sovereign, he added the representation of a fly so perfect to nature that the Emperor raised his hand to brush the fly off.' We ourselves have seen a cat go up to examine a bird which was drawn standing on a spray in a most natural manner. These stories point out one of the most striking characteristics of certain Chinese painting-its graphic character-and remind us of Appelles' horse which the living horses neighed to, as well as the other famous story of a horse trying to eat a sheaf of corn on the canvas. With equally minute care they faithfully copy flowers, bamboos, and trees, noting carefully the minute ramifications of branches, as well as the action of each particular kind of wind on the objects painted; while, however, all these points are being attended to with a patience worthy of the highest commendation, as it produces a sort of fidelity to nature, yet. at the same time the whole perchance is vastly deficient in

correspondence and proportion.' This entering into the mysteries of nature and the reproduction of some of them with an approach almost to photographic fidelity, scarcely to be expected from them judging by some of the other productions of their pencils, is of interest and use to the botanical student, since the illustrations in such a native work, for instance, as the great Materia Medica, the Pên Ts'ao, give a far better idea from their. in many instances, great truthfulness than the mere letter-press would convey to the foreign student. Their attempts at depicting animal life result in rude, uncouth forms, but the conventionality of the attitudes of the human figure frequently lends a charm which does not attach to many of their products. The proportion and grouping together of the component parts of a picture are defined by a conventional canon, to the rigid adherence of which is due much of the unreality so conspicuous in their attempts at portraying the human passions, and they have remained at the same imperfect development of this branch of their art for many centuries; (this stage has been compared to that of Italian painting in the time of Giotto and Simone Memmi), added to which is their entire ignorance of anatomy, the result of this ignorance being often a caricature of the human body. At the same time all praise must be given to the delicacy of their colouring, which, without any scientific laws to guide them, they seem intuitively to know how to apply. They are very fond of their works of art, and the mansions of the wealthy are hung with scrolls depicting landscapes and sprays of flowers, with birds, insect life, etc. Even the poorer classes adorn their humbler dwellings with cheaper specimens of pictorial art, and scarcely a boat of any pretensions on the Canton river but is ornamented with a few pictures, while the sellers of sketches in black and white find a ready sale for their wares in the

streets.

It is necessary, however, to remember that our commendation is awarded to purely native art, the bastard productions of those daubers who seem to thrive in Hongkong and some of the Treaty Ports being altogether beneath contempt.