and they are presented in her well-known graphic manner, that of a trained traveler who rejoices in the possession of a trained pen.

foreign Western powers."

are

The vast literature on China falls under two heads-international and national. To the former class belongs, among the new books under discussion here, Miss Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore's China, the Long-Lived Empire; to the latter, Mr. Colquhoun's Overland to China, to which we shall return again later on. Miss Scidmore's book is mostly a record of travel (this being her sixth visit to China), which, while chiefly regarding the country, does not neglect its people, and occasionally wanders into history and politics. She agrees with nearly all writers who have preceded her, that "no Occidental ever saw within or understood the working of the yellow brain, which starts from and arrives at a different point by reverse and inverse processes we can neither follow nor comprehend. No one knows, or ever will really know the Chinese-the heart and soul and springs of thought of the most incomprehensible, unfathomable, inscrutable, contradictory, logical, illogical people on earth. Of all Orientals, no race is so alien. Not a memory nor a custom, not a tradition nor an idea, not a rootword nor a symbol of any kind associates our past with their past." The country itself and its people, she complains, are maddening in their colorless surface uniformity: "Nothing Chinese seems worth. seeing; one has only a frantic, irrational desire to get away from it, to escape it, to return to civilization, decency, cleanliness, quiet, and order." Yet, for all that, she must have seen many things worth seeing, for her book is crowded with them,

Miss Scidmore is not a sociologist, nor could she, even if she were, have hoped to gain an insight into Chinese institutions

the country, as most of her time was spent in travel. The missionaries, who dwell with the people for years, have probably the best opportunities for social and psychological studies, and one of them, at least, has made excellent use of his chances. This is the Rev. Arthur H. Smith, for twenty-six years a missionary of the American Board, who, in Village Life in China, gives us not only, as his sub-title indicates, a "study in sociology," but also, we think, some valuable psychological documents pour servir in the interpretation of the Chinese national character. Mr. Smith, by dwelling among them, has learned to see the good qualities of the Celestials, the better traits that, lying below the surface, are apt to be passed unnoticed by the tourist who mostly comes in contact only with the far from disingenuous interpreters, guides, and "boys" of all kinds of the treaty ports whose only aim and end is gain. The Chinese empire, like our own bodies politic, is based on the family, and there, as here, the country, not the large towns, furnishes the backbone of the State and represents the national type most truly. "The Chinese village," says Mr. Smith, "is the empire in small, and when that has been surveyed we shall be in a better condition to suggest a remedy for whatever needs amendment."

At bottom, according to Mr. Smith, the Chinese do not differ so very greatly from the rest of mankind. The foundation of human nature is the same, but it has adapted itself to conditions entirely dissimilar from our own, and has petrified into certain forms that, while not quite

SIR ROBERT HART, BARONET [From "A Cycle of Cathay." Copyright by F. H Revell Co.]

touching the one element that makes all the world kin, go down deep enough to make the Chinaman appear entirely different from us. He has been influenced by circumstances that have remained unchanged for centuries, and has become unchangeable as they. Only the root remains unaffected, but it will take Occidental civilization long to dig down to it through tradition, habit and prejudice, which must be removed before modern reconstruction can be begun. Mr. Smith has approached the Chinaman not as a Chinaman, but as a man and brother, with, somewhere in his peculiar mental make-up, a point of contact; therefore he has succeeded so remarkably well. He has come, he says, to feel a profound respect for the numerous admirable qualities of the Chinese, and to entertain for many of them a high personal regard. He does not idealize them; as a missionary he is but too well acquainted with their weaknesses and worse, but he weighs the good against the bad, and the relative proportions are about the

same as elsewhere. His book is a curious study of the oldest village life on earth, and at the same time a valuable Chinese "human document."

He

Dr. W. A. P. Martin's A Cycle of Cathay, though published in 1896, is as timely now as when it was written. In fact, in the case of the unchanging kingdom a cycle is but as a day, and what was true of it fifty years ago is as true to-day. Dr. Martin, whose life in China, as missionary and as president of the Imperial Tungwen College, began in 1850 and extended over forty years, saw the whole of China's modern history from the prelude to England's first war against China to the ChinoJapanese war, and was a part of it when serving this country for two years during the negotiation of the treaties which led to the opening of Peking. His narrative has, therefore, historical value; but, in addition, he, like Mr. Smith, gives us a view of the Chinese as individuals. was thrown together, by his official position as head of a government institution, with a different class of Chinamen from those seen by Mr. Smith, and he studied. them closely in their social and political life. Appreciative and critical in turn, according to the merits of individuals and causes, the book, which passed through two editions at the time of its publication, deserves renewed attention just now. There is, of course, a strong personal note in its pages, reminiscences and anecdotes of leading Chinamen and foreigners; and, by the way, we may advise Mr. Colquhoun, who is inclined to include American diplomats in his complaint of the blindness. and inefficiency of British diplomacy in China, to read Dr. Martin's clear and convincing references to the ability of our representatives at Peking, from Anson Burlingame to Colonel Denby, his record stopping with the latter; but, certainly, there has been neither blindness nor indecision in our policy since then.

A new issue of the revised edition of Prof. Samuel Wells Williams's encyclopædic Middle Kingdom, "a survey of the geography, government, literature, social life, arts and history of the Chinese empire and its inhabitants," has been brought out with illustrations and a new map. The first edition of this monumental work appeared as far back as 1848, but of the original text comparatively little remained after it had again passed through the painstaking, able hands of its author, who died in the year after its reissue. His profound erudition as a sinologist was amply recognized by our Government, which made him interpreter to the legation at Peking, and nine times its chargé d'affaires. Dr. Martin says of his magnum opus, "Not to speak of minor publications, his Middle Kingdom is a storehouse of information on China not likely soon to

be superseded"; and after this praise from Sir Hubert it were vain to attempt eulogy. Miss Scid more too pays tribute to the book and to its author, "the great Wells Williams, who has lent lustre to the roll of American diplomats serving in China." Williams began life as a printer to the American Board mission, and ended his brilliant career as Professor of Chinese at Yale.

Still another testimonial to the merits of Dr. Williams's book is found in the third edition of Mr. J. Dyer Ball's Things Chinese. He says that "for those who wish to get a general idea of the Empire, and all that concerns it and its people, there is not a better book. It is a perfect repository of information for the general reader." Mr. Ball's own useful alphabetical handbook has been increased from 500 to nearly 700 pages, not only by the

addition of new articles but also by the extension of many of the old ones. His text has been thoroughly revised throughout down to December, 1899.

Mr. Archibald R. Colquhoun, reference to whose Overland to China has already been made in this paper, was formerly in the British civil service, as Deputy Commissioner in Burma and Administrator of Mashonaland. The practical completion of the Siberian railroad, and the possibilities it opens up for Russia and the whole world in the coming century, led him, in 1898, to travel by the road as far as it was completed then, from St. Petersburg to the northern frontier of China; thence to Peking and southward down the Yangtse. He begins his narrative with

the history of the conquest and occupation of Siberia, which might well have attracted the attention of some Russian Sienkiewicz; examines the industries, products and future possibilities of the immense country; describes the railroad itself, much of which, he says, will have to be rebuilt, and treats as fully of Manchuria, Mongolia and China. He is a close

and experienced student of contemporary politics; a Briton to the core, of course; proud of his country, though discontented with its rulers that be, and an able and just exponent of the wonderful growth of Russia and the ability of her diplomatists. His book carries weight and conviction, and will carry both far, for he has the happy

knack of presenting his masterly survey of the whole Far Eastern situation in a firm, readable manner. His book certainly ranks high among the few that are absolutely indispensable for a thorough understanding of the Chinese question in its wider aspect.

Mr. Henry Norman's The Peoples and Politics of the Far East may well be added to the list of books worth reading at the present crisis. It was written five years ago, and its author has since seen some of his prophecies verified by subsequent events, notably that of Russia's acquisition of Manchuria, and of a southern terminus for the Siberian railroad. His prediction of Spain's loss of the Philippines has also come true, but this country