SOUTHERN QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. XXIII. JULY, 1847. ART. I.-CHina and the CHINESE. 1. Morale de Confucius, Philosophe Chinois. Paris. 1818. 2. Le Poivre's Travels of a Philosopher in various countries of Asia and Africa. Baltimore: N. G. Maxwell. 1818. 3. The Chinese Courier. 1832. Canton. 4. Wood's Sketches of China. 1830. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea. 5. The Chinese; a general description, &c. By JOHN FRANCIS DAVIS, Esq., F. R. S., &c. New-York: Harper & Brothers. 1836. 6. The Stranger in China, in 1836 and 1837. By C. TOOGOOD DOWNING, Esq. Lea & Blanchard. 1838. 7. China; or illustrations of the Symbols, Philosophy, Antiquities, Customs, Superstitions, Laws, Government, Education and Literature of the Chinese. By SAMUEL KIDD, Professor of the Chinese Language, in University College, London. Taylor & Walton. 1841. 8. The Chinese as they Are. By G. T. LAY, Esq., Naturalist to Beechy's Expedition. Edited by E. G. Squier. Albany, N. Y. 1943. 9. Documents sent to Congress by the Executive Depart ment of the United States, in 1840, 1841 and 1845, concerning our relations with the Chinese Empire,our Commerce, Diplomacy, &c., &c. 1 VOL. XII. NO. 23. 10. A Peep at China, in Mr. Dunn's Chinese Collection, with Miscellaneous Notices, &c., &c. By E. C. WINES, Esq.; privately printed for Mr. Dunn, at Philadelphia, in 1839. 11. Ljungstedt's Historical Sketches of the Portuguese Settlements in China, and of the Roman Catholic Church and Mission in China. Boston. 1836. Few things impress the mind more majestically than a gray mountain, or an ancient cypress upheaving to the morning sun the bald brow and gnarled trunk, unscathed by the lightnings which have played around them for centuries. A venerable man, who has passed through all the tempests of life, whether in the field or on the sea,-as a statesman or a civilian,-is ever an object of peculiar respect. We feel not only that he is a living history of his age, filled with all the experience that dignifies life, but that he has been an active agent for good or evil, and that some thought has issued from the silent chamber of his brain, of some decree that has been signed by that frail and trembling hand, has perhaps changed the destiny of nations, and affected the condition of the world. Such is the solemn influence of years and fixedness in the character of an individual or even in the appearance of inanimate objects. We instinctively venerate that which has resisted danger and vicissitude successfully, for it is the evidence of power. Age and permanency affect the soul irresistibly. But the feeling becomes akin to sublimity, when the scene is changed from nature or an individual, to a nation; and in regard to none is it, indeed, more lively than the one whose character and condition it is our purpose to treat of in this article. The Chinese Empire is a problem in duration. "Let us take classic Asia as delineated by D'Anville," says a writer, "and we shall find on comparison with more recent maps of that quarter of the globe by other geographers, that scarcely a single place or territory has retained its denomination, except China. Invincible conquerors have swept over the earth, and the revolutions of empires have almost kept pace with those on its own axis. Once in each thousand years the great map of the world has had to be retraced and geography reconstructed with names, nations, and demarcations before unknown and undreamt of, whilst the old nomenclature is consigned to the musty records of the things that were; but in all this 'wreck of matter and crash of worlds,' the Chinese empire, alone, has stood firm, immovable, permanent, for thousands of years-scarcely ruffled by dynastic changes, giving the law even to its Mantchew emperors, who wisely merged the claims of conquest in those of adoption, and sank their own nationality in that of the vast country, pure, homogeneous, unmixed, and uncontaminated alone of all the earth, in its people and lineage. Where are the powerful red tribes, which once figured with local habitation and a name on the maps of North America? Where the gallant Saracens, who sustained the renown of the Caliphate of Haroun el Rashid, who carried conquest, chivalry, and civilization from Asia to Africa, and from Africa to Spain? In the modern atlas we search for them in vain: whilst China alone remains the stereotyped impression of every map, and the enduring monument of every She alone substantially connects all the various and ever-varying phases of the past with the present, from all time unchanging, as still unchanged herself, amidst change and revolution all around her." age. A short time since the integrity of this vast and powerful empire was seriously threatened. During a long series of years the foreigners residing in China,-although warned in the mildest and most persuasive manner by the national authorities, persisted in the contraband trade of a destructive drug. Through the supineness, corruption, or inefficiency of the Chinese, the revenue laws were set at defiance, and the poisonous article was secretly forced into the country to the value of many millions annually. "When the rich man had finished his pipe," said a traveller, "the dregs of opium which remained in the bowl were not thrown away as useless, but were carefully collected for a second smoking by an inferior person. The wealthy alone could afford fresh extract each time; but that which had been once used was not considered very much inferior, as it is said to be equal in strength, though inferior in flavor only. When the second smoking was completed, the ashes were again preserved, and sold, with the scrapings and dirt of the pipe, to the poor man, who mixed it with tobacco, tea, or some such ma terial, and it was then a third time ignited!" Thus the drug, originally scarce and costly,-filters through all ranks in China, from the mandarin to the cooley; and there can scarcely be a doubt that in the course of time, the poison will produce its serious consequences even on a nation, which has been computed at more than three hundred millions. In 1840, the forcible interruption of this contraband trade, was the proximate cause of war with England. That contest has fortunately terminated without dismembering the Chinese Empire, and has produced commercial treaties with all the leading nations of the world. But, in order to achieve this result, the most dreadful scenes of carnage took place in the conflict between a people, eminently skilled in all the modern arts of war, and another, as eminently ignorant of all its armaments and strategy. Lieut. Ouchterlong, in his history of the war, gives the following description of a scene that awaited the English troops at the successful storming of Ching-Kiang-foo. "In almost every deserted house the children had been madly murdered. The bodies of most of the hapless little ones, who had fallen sacrifices to the enthusiasm and mad despair of their parents, were found lying within the houses, and usually within the chambers of the women, as if each father had assembled the whole of his family before consummating the dreadful massacre; but many corpses of boys were lying in the streets, amongst those of horses and soldiers, as if an alarm had spread, and they had been stabbed while they were attempting to escape from their ruthless parents. In a few instances these poor little sufferers were found the morning after the assault, still breathing; the tide of life ebbing slowly away, as they lay writhing in the agony of a broken spine-a mode of destruction so cruel that, but for the most certain evidence of its reality, it would not be believed. "In one of the houses, the bodies of seven dead and dying persons were found in one room, forming a group which, for loathsome horror, was perhaps unequalled. The house was evidently the abode of a man of some rank and consideration, and the delicate forms and features of the sufferers, denoted them as belonging to the higher order of Tartars. On the floor, essaying in vain to put forth a spoon into the mouths of two children extended on a mattress, writhing in the agonies of death, caused by the dislocation of their spines, sat an old decrepid man, weeping bitterly as he listened to the piteous moans and convulsive breathings of the poor infants, while his eyes wandered over the ghastly relics of mortality around him. "On a bed near the dying children, lay the body of a beautiful young woman, her limbs and apparel arranged as if in sleep. She was cold, and had been long dead. One arm clasped her neck, over which a silk scarf was thrown, to conceal the gash in her throat, which had destroyed life. Near her lay the corpse of a woman somewhat more advanced in years, stretched on a silk coverlet, her features distorted, and her eyes open and fixed, as if she had died by poison or strangulation. There was no wound upon the body, nor any blood upon her person or clothes. A dead child stabbed through the neck, lay near her; and in the narrow verandah adjoining the room, were the corpses of two more women, suspended from the rafters by twisted cloths wound round their necks. They were both young-one quite a girl; and their features, in spite of the hideous distortion produced by the mode of their death, retained traces of their original beauty sufficient to show the lovely mould in which they had been cast. "In the death of the Tartar chief in command at this disastrous business, there was undoubtedly a savage grandeur, and it has had its due share of praise. But if other actions of the man were known, this particular one might lose something of its gloomy lustre. His name was Hae-ling. After haranguing his troops, he had mounted his horse, and, placing himself at their head, led them to the ground upon which their desperate attack upon the 18th and 49th regiments was made. Thence seeing that the main defences of the town were in our possession, and that the day was irretrievably lost, he returned to his house, and calling for his secretary, desired him to bring his official papers into a small room adjoining an inner court of the building, where, deliberately seating himself, and causing the papers, with a quantity of wood, to be piled up around him, he dismissed the secretary, set fire to the funeral pile, and perished in the flames. In the apartment where this strange example of barbarian heroism had been enacted, Mr. Morrison found, among some heaps of ashes and halfconsumed wood, evidences of the awful sacrifice which had been so determinedly consummated, amply sufficient to corroborate the tale of his informant. The skull of the general was yet unconsumed; and the bones of the thighs and feet, though partially calcined, retained enough of their original form and appearance to be recognised. The floor of the room was paved; and the flames had consequently not extended beyond the pile of fuel. Thus perished this brave man, whose devotion to his country, rendered him, to quote the words of Sir Henry Pottinger's proclamation, 'worthy of a nobler and better fate.'"* These were some of the domestic results of this war; and although the carnage, in this instance, proceeded from selfslaughter, it was entirely attributable to the fear the Chinese entertained of invaders, who, they were taught to believe, would spare neither age, rank, nor sex, in the fury of successful assault, The ransoms The war, however, is now happily over. and indemnities have been paid by the vanquished. Trea The Emperor on hearing of the signal bravery and self-sacrifice of Hae-ling, ordered the highest honors to be paid to his memory, and munificent favors to be dispensed to his wife, and all his relations. A splendid Temple, in commemoration of his virtues and unexampled courage, is to be erected immediately, at Ching-Keang-foo; and a tablet, with his name inscribed by the Emperor's own hand, is to be suspended in the hall of the principal Temple at Peking. |