67. In a pleasant hall the swallows do not know that the back of the house is on fire. This was the advice given by a general of the king of Wei, who was discussing in council whether the king of Tsin would do him any harm if he should conquer the Tsoo state, against which he was warring; the general's advice was to make all his defenses ready. 69. When a cuckoo occupies the magpie's nest, he quietly enjoys another's labors. The commentary remarks, when a magpie builds a nest the cuckoo lives in it,' a well known trait in the habits of the cuckoo. 69. beast. 70. Although the orang outang can speak, he is still a brute Although the parrot can talk, he cannot be better than a flying bird. 72. 71. The kestril is the most envious of birds. Of all birds, the stork alone has a womb. 73. When you hear the bird te hou, te hoo, you may be sure there's wine in the village. 74. When you hear the bird to hoo, to hoo, you may know that it will soon be warm. These two are puns upon the songs of the birds. The cry te hoo, te hoo, means bring the wine jar! bring the wine jar!' that of to hoo, to hoo, ‘take off cloaks! take off cloaks!' 75. To say, you are a monkey decked out with a crown, is to ridicule a man who is stingy. 76. To say, you are a horse or cow dressed up in robes, is to rail at a man who is ill-mannered. 77. To hang on the tail of a beautiful horse, describes those who look up to others for promotion. 78. The parrot is called the golden-robed nobleman. 79. The medallion pheasant is termed the grandee with the ornamented girdle. 80. When a hawk enters a flock of crows, will they not fear their enemy? 81. The ducklings swim and the old hen clucks, but they care not for her voice or kind. 82. When the tiger's whelp puts on a sheep's skin, the whelp is strong and destroys the sheep. 83. The lark, at early dawn, learns the songs of all other birds. 84. If you speak foolishly, in what do you differ from the heart of a brute? 85. A respectable man had rather be a hen's mouth than a cow's tail. 86. The beauties of the sweet flag and the willow are all decayed before autumn. 87. The older ginger and cassia are, the hotter they are. 88. The Nelumbium is the prince among flowers. 89. 'A country beauty' and 'heaven's fragance,' are both pretty appellations of flowers. 90. 91. The fleur-de-lis causes one to forget his griefs. Do not pull up your stockings in a melon field, or arrange your hat under a peach tree. This cantion is given lest these motious should lead people, at a distance watching you, to suppose you were stealing the fruit. 92. The sunflower, which turns its back upon the moon, and faces the sun, is an emblem of a chaste Budhist priest. There is a play upon the words sun and moon in this comparison; the sun is called the male or yang principle, and the moon yin or female, which terms are also applied to the sexes: a Budhist, by his vows, turns his back upon all females. 93. The flowers of the olive blossom in the morning and fall off in the evening: so are beauty and splendor which do not endure. 94. To have thorns upon the back describes a man tormented with fears and apprehensions. 95. A sour plum by the roadside all men throw away. 96. An old inan marrying a young wife, is like a withered willow shooting out sprouts. 97. Sew's nother wrote with a rush in order to instruct her son: who does not call her a worthy? 99. Wang Yung sold peaches and bored the stones, an instance of avarice not to be surpassed. He did so that his customers should not plant the stones and raise their own peaches. 99. In eating sugar cane begin at the top, and you will gradually find it sweeter and sweeter. They say that the top is nearly tasteless, and if the sweet root is eaten first, half of the stalk will be thrown away. 100. To cook the beans by burning the support, is like brothers injuring each other. 101. To break down the tall bamboos to shelter the young shoots, is like rejecting the old to patronize the new. The caution is not to cast off old things, which have been long tried and found useful, for the sake of trying every promising novelty. 102 The weeds and grass in the road must be rooted up to see the way, so must the prejudices of the mind be expurgated to see truth. The prejudices of man are here likened to worthless reeds, with which the avenues of the heart, supposed to be seven, are so choked that truth has no ingress. 103. To water the branches and leaves is not as good as to pro tect the root. 104 To cook the peaches of Gae's garden, spoils their fine flavor. This is said to those who are no judges of what is good in quality. W. ART. VII. Review: The Fanqui in China, in 1836-37. By C. Toogood Downing, esq. London, 1838. 3 vols. - THAT the reading public of England - and, we may add, of America is indeed interested in whatever relates to China, or tends to illustrate the character of its people, we presume to be a fact, not merely because the author of the Fanqui in China,' so tells his readers, but also from our observation of the greediness with which, every alluring, but unsatisfying, bait, that can upon any pretense be denominated Chinese, is snatched up by the indefatigable anglers of Paternoster Row. C. Toogood Downing, esquire, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and now author of the Fanqui in China,' visited this country, as the medical officer of a trading vessel, in the year 1836; remained, chiefly on board his vessel, paying occasional visits to Canton, for a period of about six mouths-from September to February; walked through some few streets of this city; visited the half dozen public buildings that are worth seeing, or are accessible; conversed with, it may be, a dozen foreigners able to give him information, either orally, or through the medium of their writings; chatted with the purveyors of provisions, subaltern interpreters, washerwomen, and other persons, connected with the shipping at Whampoa (persons highly respectable, no doubt, in their way, but hardly wellfitted to communicate information regarding the great empire of which they may have seen, perchance, an area of a dozen miles square); then went away; and, feeling the cacoëthes scribendi strong upon him, bethought himself to publish a book. He looked,' he says, 'over his note-book, and was surprised to find in it many things which had never yet, to his knowledge, appeared in any work on China.' He cast about for a title; and, at once to astonish the natives,' and to make fair promise of something new, he adopted that of 'The Fauqui in China 'a name not unsuitable to what his book might have been but for what it really is, a more appropriate title would have been, 'A Voyage to China, made by a literary body-snatcher, under an attack of scriptital (or scribbling) fever, containing the results of observations personal upon the river of Canton, and observations through the medium of others within the compass of many books.' With truth may we apply to Mr. Toogood Downing's work ་ the hackneyed summary of the class to which it belongs, what is new,' &c.,- our readers will remember the rest. We rejoice to have the assurance that an interest in what relates to China does exist in the bosom of the reading public of the west. But we mouru to see this interest so little in unison with sense, or discernment, as to permit the frequent publication of works such as that before us. With this, however, those literary castigators, the reviewers have to do,-not we, who are wholly unaccustomed to wield the rod and in the hands of those ruthless men we must leave the task of correcting the public taste; while two words of reproof to the writer, and a word of admonition to such as would be his readers, are all that we ourselves can spare time for. As to the writer,- he has undertaken a task for which he was wholly incompetent, and this we will shortly endeavor to prove, not by any elaborate evidence, but by some brief quotations from the first few chapters of his first volume. Not only, however, has he professed to perform what he was utterly incompetent to execute, he has also allured his readers to bear him company, under false pretences of an easy journey, though intending to drag them over a toilsome and craggy road. While his title promises an account of the foreigners resident in China, and while he holds out to 'the good-natured reader who may be inclined to accompany him,' the hope of receiving from him, a notion of European life in China, and perhaps of being introduced to as intimate an acquaintance with this singular people as the very limited nature of our intercourse will now admit,'- while such is the cheering and pleasant tone he adopts at starting, little is the reader aware, that, his real purpose is, to beguile him into a snare, and to drag him along a tedious route, that he may worry him with many wild fancies, and may finally plunge him into the depths of Chinese law, religion, mythology, literature, science, and art, after having first rendered the same turbid by his own splashings therein. At times, too, he will take occasion to stun him with repetitions of tales, not unlike some of those that baron Munchausen, count Benyowski, and Mendez Pinto were furnished withal,— tales which we will attribute not so much to the exuberance of his rich fancy, as to the pliableness of his ready credulity. But let us not be unjust in the midst of our censures: though much of what he has written is well calculated to excite the exclamation 'good! too good!' which was, a few years back, the fashionable note of admiration appended to all that was worthy of a laugh or a smile, he is yet not without the signs of creditable abilities. But he made 42 VOL. VII. NO. VI. a great sacrifice of judgment to vanity, when he deemed that those abilities were so great and so good, as that, in a few brief months, spent chiefly as we have said at Whampoa (or, for the sake of comparison, let us call it Blackwall), he should be qualified to improve upon the writings of men of abilities not less good, and of experieuce twentyfold, yea, fortyfold, longer than his own. Had our author kept his remarks within the sphere of his personal observations of the striking points in the position of foreigners in China, and in the character and manners of such natives as he could gain opportunities of meeting — he would still have committed errors, it is probable,—but he might, with judgment, have produced a work worthy of perusal and of retention in the memory for those points that strike at first contact are precisely the ones that are most likely to be forgotten by the writer who has had long experience. Had he further garnished these observations by such correct information, in regard to various peculiarities, as he might have drawn from the writings of Davis and others, but which it would have been difficult for him to pick up from morning-visit acquaintances, he might have greatly added to the value of this supposed work. To do this, we candidly allow, Mr. Downing was by no means incompetent, unless perhaps from the imperfection of an immature judgment which needs the ripening of a few more summers. And far more pleasant had it been for us in such case to yield our meed of commendation to his single volume, than it now is for us to tear the mask from the vanity that has sent forth, under a humble but rather foolish title, three fashionable-novel-like volumes of trivial observations, crude notions, idle fancies, and vain speculations, upon China, its customs, its language, and a numberless host of et-ceteras. In place of the clever note-book which he might have given us and in which we should not have asked perfection, he has furnished us with an omnium gatherum of scribblings, de omnibus sinensium rebus et quibusdam aliis, very much in the style of recreative communications to a Pickwickian literary club. But we have promised to substantiate by extracts some of our charges against Mr. Downing; we will therefore proceed to do so, after we have solicited his prospective readers to turn back to the remarks that we have just made in reprehension of him, and to take them as an admonition and warning of what they have to expect. And now to our extracts. The first exhibits our author's knowledge of meteorology, and affords an example of error inexcusable in a medical man, too, that is, a man of inquiry, observation, who had been resident in China through nearly the one udgment |