the seating, and the food and the drink; and the Emperor Tsi-she-hoang is praised for restoring the old invitations and banquets, where every single ceremony took its due course in beginning and end, so that a modest and decent joy beamed in all eyes. To give a model for domestic feasts, they order public ceremonies in all the cities; Mandarins preside at them; the law invites scholars and distinguished citizens to them; and here, too, the rites are prescribed down to the minutest detail. The chief object of these feasts is to signalize merit, to preserve morality, and the friendly as well as conventional proprieties. The President reads aloud for that purpose, in the name of the Emperor, certain paragraphs of the law, the introduction to which specially calls to mind that the gathering is not really made for the sake of the enjoyment of meat and drink, but to revive loyalty to the Prince, and more to the same effect; and all their songs and pieces of music have reference to that. A single drinking-song, of somewhat more liberal spirit, I found in the “Shi-King,” but in that the translator may possibly have had a large share, especially in regard to the form. The contents are very characteristic of Chinese poetry in general, whose bare realism offers a remarkable contrast to that of the Orientals:—

But, even in their highest ecstasy, the brave drinkers still preserve a sort of calmness; and if there is anything that can be called a sober intoxication, this seems to be excellently expressed in the following very characteristic song:—

With this extreme point of drinking I will close. This dull intoxication is about what a warm grain-wine would produce, and fits the disagreeable character of the Chinese as well as the anecdote occurring in another song, where one whose invited guests do not appear at the right time, is actually rejoiced to think he may now drink up his wine alone. The value of wine for social enjoyment can scarcely be known there, where conventionality ties the tongues, where there is a tribunal of ceremonies, and where the tea-kettle is forever on the fire, which among us, too, fosters only embroidery, gossip and nervous debility. And then the greedy desire for physical enjoyment is the one thing which makes the Chinaman love his wine and his spicy concoctions, and which in this point has ever driven him into a never-before-heard-of opposition against his Government. How dreadful it is, however, to see these crude and childish remnants of antiquated customs most closely knit now with the most refined and elaborate tastes, wants and habits thus in vogue among the people, together with secret and most pernicious vices, and yet to find that not a single voice can be raised against it, because, with the most subtle cunning, down to the very limits of physical needs, every expression of indignation or of joy has been forbidden by law!