to the true wizards, who compel you to they hunger for another. The drambelieve in goodness, even though you drinker can do no more. Novel-drinkhave met it so rarely; to love nobleness, ing is not so expensive, so outwardly even though your own few noble actions repulsive, nor can it be said that it brings have been ignobly rewarded; to place the same ruin and disgrace upon families. the spirit above matter, virtue above in- But the individual is as surely enfeebled terest, and to prefer martyrdom to any by it, his taste corrupted, his will untriumph attained unworthily. strung, his understanding soddened. It has often been urged that works of And this habit of reading novel upon imagination, such as we here describe, novel for reading's sake is the principal have a dangerous tendency: since they cause of the general Vice of Reading of encourage hopes which are never fulfilled, which we complain. If people cannot nourish nothing but illusions, and by get novels, they will read anything rather bringing into yet more definite contrast than not read at all; just as the confirmed what might be and ought to be, and what drunkard will drink spirits of wine, ink, is, engender a discontent with life as it or even water, rather than not drink. exists. But it is the very business of Provided he feels a bottle or a tumbler at imagination, rightly directed, to generate his lips, it is something. It is better than a discontent with life as it exists: since nothing. See people get into railway life as it exists requires much changing, carriages. They are going to travel or at least much modification; and pro- through a delightful country, clad in all vided the discontent, which is in itself the witching garb of vernal beauty, in just and elevated, be not in its effects summer's magnificent array, in autumn's barren, do not become moody, misan- almost tropical gorgeousness, or in the thropical, and indifferent to the welfare weird and solemn but deeply interesting of mankind, it is highly desirable that it and suggestive aspect of winter. They should be felt. It is the placid satisfac-buy a wretched volume of what is called tion with the most unsatisfactory arrange- " American humour," or, oh! ye gods! a ments, which the absence of imagination newspaper: a newspaper that contains and what is called the practical temperament beget, that is our real danger and bane. Hence, no matter how much cleverness of the beaverish sort, to borrow, with a fresh adaptation, an excellent phrase of Mr. Carlyle, may have gone into what is called a "realistic" novel, if the writer remains satisfied with portraying things just as they are, still more, if he portrays the mean and more contemptible phenomena of life, leaving it to the reader to conclude that so it is and it can't be helped or mended, his book can certainly be an assistance to no one. It cannot be described as instructive, since its very merit consists in its accurate representation of something, already known, being recognized by the reader; and it obviously is not elevating. It may possibly prove a recreation; and so long as the style of fiction was produced sparingly and read sparingly, it might possibly escape condemnation.

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nothing new, and is probably only another version of one they have already perused, or an evening rechaufé of the two. That they should contemplate the divine face of Nature, that they should rejoice in the flowery tracery of the hedgerows, in the reedy, sedgy pools, in the swaying corn, in the undulations caused by rise and dip and hollow, all with their special lights and shades; in the halfdarkness of bits of well-grown wood; in the growing thickness of young plantations which catch the sunbeams and keep them in a net of half-invisible green and gold, — never seems to occur to them. They ensconce themselves as deep as they can in their stuffy cushions, try to persuade themselves that they are indoors, pull out their paper-cutters, draw their hats over their brows, and imbibe their newspaper or their meaningless book of jokes. If it be late evening or night, they light a reading-lamp, and continue the enervating pursuit. As for thinking, by way of a change, that is out of the question. When they do not read, they sleep; or if they neither read nor sleep, they try to talk. Railway travelling is well calculated to lower considerably one's estimate of one's species.

But the mischief is, it is produced in the most prolific manner, and it is not read merely, it is devoured. People do not wait to read it until they are tired, overworked, and jaded, or till holiday time comes round. They rush to the circulating libraries for it the moment it is announced, apply for it, clamour for it, and The modern newspaper is to the full as never rest until they are devoting them- noxious as the modern novel; but it, too, selves to its perusal. Having finished it,' is ubiquitous and universal. How many

times a-year does there occur anything exact, the conditions under which they which can really be called news? Fifty write forbidding such a result; and it times? We doubt it. Yet more than is impossible for readers who read newssix times fifty times do newspapers make papers and "current literature" to be their appearance in the course of the full, since what they read there is empyear. Every day, - nay, every night and tier than the wind. every morning, has its "latest intelli- Is it any wonder that people can no gence;" and every night and every morn- longer converse? Conversation implies ing a dozen subjects supposed to be of prior consideration, or the genius which the first importance are what is called strikes out thought spontaneously. With "discussed." One would suppose that the last we need not concern ourselves; so much discussion would settle the vari- and the first is not to be provided by ous questions thus treated. Not at all. desultory reading. "Have you read," or They crop up again week after week, Have you seen," is the opening phrase month after month, year after year, of nearly all modern talk. If in reply to damnably reiterated." The fact is, the inquiry, "Did you read that article there is no desire to settle them. News- in the Standard?" you say, "I never papers are financial speculations, and are read a newspaper," you are either not written, not with the object of settling | believed or are supposed to be wishing anything, or of doing good to any human to be rude. If, in answer to an interbeing, save their proprietors, but in order regatory whether you have seen the nothat they may be bought. No blame to tice of the pictures in the Royal Academy those who own, and very little to those in the Athenæum, you observe that you who write them. But what fools people rarely if ever go to the Academy, but that if must be who read them! Some persons you did you should certainly never dream accept the facts asserted in them for facts, of seeing what was written about them and the opinions as sound opinions : — an in the Athenæum or elsewhere, you are unmixed mischief; since it is never desir-set down as peculiar or conceited. Yet able to get into the habit of accepting facts on insufficient evidence, and it is fatal to allow one's self to be inoculated passively with another person's opinion, be he who he may. Yet you will see a roomful of people set in a flutter by the arrival of the newspaper, and they pounce upon it with all the eagerness- we must again use the only analogy that fitly represents the case of confirmed drunkards.

why should you waste your time over the latter operation? Opinion is well, a matter of opinion; and you can only ventilate your own by discussing its value with some other intelligent person or persons. To talk about pictures, if they happen to be pictures worth talking about, is sensible enough. To read about them, whether you have seen them or whether you have not, is childish. Yet to return for a moment to novels, people are not satisfied even with reading worthless novels; they must then read still more worthless notices of them in the papers. It is the drunkard, not only draining his glass, but licking it out.

We do not affirm that it would be a good thing if a stop could be put to the issuing of novels and newspapers, much less of all printed matter, but we do unhesitatingly assert that it would be an exceedingly good thing if all printed matter could be withdrawn from the hands We believe that boredom is a word of of grown-up people for ten years, if the modern origin. Certainly the thing is. only alternative be that this superabun- People used to be wearied, to be lonely. dance of it is to continue. The com- But just think what this last word must plaint is an old one, that conversation is have meant in days when habitations a lost art. It is the art of printing that were placed aloof from each other, far killed it; and the art of printing is rapidly and wide, when roads were few and bad, killing something even more precious books unknown, and letters never writ than good conversation, namely, think- ten! People were not lonely then for ing. When Bacon said that reading made a full man and writing an exact man, reading and writing were in their infancy. If he had lived to these days, and could have seen how inexact are nearly all writers, and how empty nearly all readers, he would have cancelled one of his most celebrated aphorisms. It is impossible for newspaper-writers to be

the same causes as we are lonely now. They were lonely if they were not loved. They were lonely if they were shut up in prisons, and not allowed to do anything. They were not lonely, much less bored, as long as they were allowed the free use of their eyes, hands, and legs, as long as they could gaze upon the landscape, could walk, dig, ride, shoot, and wrestle

with the first physical obstacle that came in their way. Books were the first parents of boredom, and novels and newspapers are its immediate progenitors. People are bored because what they do is not worth doing, is not really either profitable or amusing, whilst the habitual doing of it has incapacitated them from turning to other and better occupations. Their minds, their whole natures, have become subdued to what they work in. They have become of the books, booky. They find no books in the running brooks, no sermons in stones, no good in anything.

a

And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.

We do not think there has ever been

man of the first rank who was what would now be called a great reader. Only second-rate men are that.

To be a well

read person is one thing, to be a great reader another; and it is pretty certain that the two never go together.

We should be glad to think that our observations had led even one person to note of warning to him. So surely as he pause and consider, and had acted as a surrenders himself to mere printed matter, to mere books and newspapers, so surely will he end by being, like most of his neighbours, a poor creature, with a flabby, flaccid, aqueous, unstable sort of a mere copy of somebody else, such as our truly Chinese civilization occupies itself with producing. Let such and such a book, though "the whole him not fear to say that he has not read

a brain;

world

And as their minds, so their bodies. We do not forget that the present generation has invented croquet, and this admirable game has been the saving of many women. Still, books are used as an excuse for coddling and laziness, when the weather is not propitious or it is not summer; and women who would take a good long walk on a winter's day, grub in their gardens, plant their own that he has never seen more than the may be chattering about it; and bulbs, take a turn at their own green- outside of such and such a journal, though house, or weed their own gravel-walks, if there were nothing else they could do, it lies on everybody's table. Let reading do none of these things because they continue to be a part of his life, but a can sit over the fire and read a new novel subsidiary part to thinking, seeing, obor pore over a dreary journal. Thus they are defrauded of their proper amount of exercise, get their muscles relaxed and their health out of gear, and lose golden opportunities of watching nature in her endless aspects, the sight

of which is a joy in itself, a subtle training towards the love of nobleness, the greatest, the truest, the most profitable of tutors. They bend over vapid pages till everything in the world seems stale, flat, and unprofitable, and till, in the current language, they are bored out of their lives. If they could have had but a Wordsworth at their side to call them forth from the threshold !

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,

We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my sister, come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;

We do not expect to change the general current, for no individual can do that. But that such

serving, and energizing.

reading as at present prevails has, by led to a deterioration of the human spereason both of its quality and quantity, cies, physically, mentally, and morally, we entertain no doubt; nor do we see how corrected, the race can escape from how, unless the vicious habit be somebeing ultimately divided into two sections,

the members of one of which will be little removed from invalids, and the members of the other scarcely distinguishable from crétins.

From All The Year Round. CHINESE PROVERBS.

THE excellence of aphorisms has been said to consist chiefly in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words; and if this be the case, the Chinese language is peculiarly adapted for the production of proverbs, for it possesses, from its peculiar structure, a beauty and pointedness of expression, which, however, no degree of care or pains can adequately convey into a translation.

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cannot discern the errors of his own actions.

The evidence of others is not compa

Let us cite from various sources a few of the numerous aphorisms, maxims, and proverbs current among the Chinese, many of which will suggest parallel senti-rable to personal experience; nor is “I heard" as good as "I saw." ments in our own and other languages. By a long journey we know a horse's strength; so length of days shows a man's heart.

life

The three great misfortunes in - In youth to bury one's father, in are: middle-age to lose one's wife, and being old to have no son.

A virtuous woman is a source of honour to her husband; a vicious one causes disgrace.

In the days of affluence always think of. poverty; do not let want come upon you and make you remember with regret the time of plenty. In contradis-him tinction to this sentiment is another: Let us get drunk to-day, while we have wine; the sorrows of to-morrow may be borne to-morrow.

To correct an evil which already exists, is not so well as to foresee and prevent it. Wine and good dinners make abundance of friends, but in the time of adversity not one is to be found.

Cautious conduct under circumstances of suspicion is inculcated somewhat oddly by the following: In a field of melons do not pull up your shoe; under a plumtree do not adjust your cap.

"Tempus fugit" becomes in Chinese, "Time flies like an arrow; days and

months like a weaver's shuttle."

Do not anxiously expect what is not yet come; do not vainly regret what is already past.

The strong feeling existing among the the Chinese against a widow's marrying a second husband is clearly seen in following: It being asked, "Supposing a widowed woman to be very poor and It was answered, destitute, might she in such a case take a second husband?" "This question arises merely from the fear of cold and hunger; but to be starved to death is a very small matter, compared with the loss of her respectability!" The Chinese, be it observed, are great sticklers for propriety and respectability, and are very much afraid of what they term "losing face."

He who at once knows himself and knows others, will triumph as often as he contends.

It is too late to pull the rein when the horse has gained the brink of the preciThe Chinese evidently agree with Sol-pice; the time for stopping the leak is omon's well-known advice to a parent, past, when the vessel is in the midst of for they say: "If you love your son be the river. liberal in punishment; if you hate your son, accustom him to dainties."

If you would understand the character of the prince, examine his ministers; if you would understand the disposition of any man, look at his companions; if you would know that of a father, observe his

son.

Man is born without knowledge, and when he has obtained it, very soon becomes old; when his experience is ripe, death suddenly seizes him.

It is easy to convince a wise man, but to reason with a fool is a difficult undertaking.

To meet with an old friend in a distant country may be compared to the delightfulness of rain after a long drought.

To the contented, even poverty and obscurity bring happiness; while to the ambitious, wealth and honours themselves are productive of misery.

The truth of the following sentiment is, we all know, not confined to China: Though a poor man should live in the midst of a noisy market, no one will ask

The fame of men's good actions seldom goes beyond their own doors; but their evil deeds are carried to the dis-about him; though a rich man should tance of a thousand miles.

Though powerful medicines are nauseous to the taste, they are good for the disease; though candid advice is unpleasant to the ear, it is profitable for the conduct.

From the following simile, lookingglasses are evidently appreciated by Chinese ladies: Without a clear mirror, a woman cannot know the state of her own face; without a true friend, a man

bury himself among the mountains, his relations will come to him from afar.

A single hair of silk does not make a thread; one tree does not make a grove. A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' mere study of books.

If a man has plenty of money but no child, he cannot be reckoned rich; if a man has children but no money, he cannot be considered poor.

If a man does good, Heaven will be- | their dislike of foreigners, and the latter stow on him a hundred blessings. against polytheism.

Great goodness and great wickedness, sooner or later, are sure to be rewarded. Of a hundred virtues, filial piety is the first.

True gold fears not the fire.

Inconstancy is expressed by the adage: Tsao san, mu sze, i.e. "In the morning three, at night four."

The French "Donner un œuf pour un bœuf," in Chinese is "To give a sheep for

an ox."

"To look for a needle in a bundle of hay" is with us expressive of trying to do an impossibility; the Chinese say "To feel for a needie at the bottom of the ocean " and "To turn a somersault in an oyster shell."

"To be bold enough to strike the tiger's beard" expresses great courage

and daring.

An ox with a ring in his nose, i.e. A man who has his passions under proper

control.

The following proverb is applied as an answer to those who foolishly murmur against the daily appointments of nature and the changes of the seasons: — No day, no night, No harvest bright; No cold, no heat, No rice to eat.

There is one proverb which requires a distinct and separate notice. It is as follows: —

You're old and ought to die by right;
You eat our rice from morn till night.

We give Mr. Moule's explanation of this "Considering the fact that the Chinese are remarkable for filial duty, the proverb would, at first sight, seem to present an instance of the extremely rare phenomenon of a national saying springing from the immoral and not from the moral side of a people's thoughts. There is always, however, a strong presumption

Where there is musk, there will of course be perfume; it will not be neces-against such an origin for any maxim sary to stand in the wind (ie. Talent and real worth will make themselves manifest without the aid of trickery).

"A basket of grain producing only a pound of chicken meat is symbolical of a losing business.

It

that has fairly passed into popular use; and it is a suggestion worth making that this proverb in particular may be an instance of the ironical humour of the Chinese, rather than of heartlessness. appears not improbable that it took its rise in the grim realities of some period of famine; it would then be perpetuated in an ironical sense, and would be used "Climbing a tree to hunt for fish" ex-humorously with what has well been presses looking for things where they cannot possibly be found.

"A toad in a well cannot behold the whole heavens" is used in reference to contracted ideas.

To covet another man's house and lose one's own ox (ie. To lose what property one already has in effort to acquire more). "To grind down an iron pestle to make a needle" is a Chinese way of expressing indomitable perseverance.

When you converse in the road, remember that there are men in the grass. The neighbouring walls have ears. Correct yourself, then correct others. Among the sayings on the border-land of apophthegms and proverbs are such sentences as "Within the four seas all are brethren;" and Tien wu êrh jih, min wu êrh huang (Heaven has not two suns, the people have not two Emperors); both of which are very effective proverbs, if adroitly used, the former against the exclusiveness of Chinese politicians and

For much of the substance of the remainder of this article we are indebted to Mr. Moule's Chapters on China and the Chinese; the metrical renderings are by that gentleman's brother.

called the irony of affection, even by the most filial and dutiful lips. At the same time, as it is always liable to the charge of a literal interpretation, it is not surprising that many Chinese will often express strong dissent from this proverb and dissatisfaction at its place among their popular sayings."

There is another proverb of a similar nature, and capable, perhaps, of a like explanation, which does not, at first sight, seem to speak well for the courage and conjugal affection of the Chinese :"

Man and wife
In tranquil life
Sit like birds upon one bough;
Trouble comes,

They shake their plumes, "Sauve qui peut," their language now. One files west,

As he thinks best;

One flies east,

Where trouble's least.

The Chinese have one proverb, which,

at any rate, breathes the spirit of true