Literature. are each of them mentioned so fully that the reader gets a fair idea of their deeds, Inderendent. Och 20/81 their personal character, and their claims The prompt mention in our list of "Books of the Week" will be considered by us an equivalent to their publishers for all volumes received. The interests of our readers will guide us in the selection of worles for further notice. BOULGER'S HISTORY OF CHINA.* THIS work comes into the market at a time when the interest of all well-wishers of China in its progress in the highest and best directions is growing. Such persons will hail a good account of the history of the Black-haired Race, as the Chinese style themselves, beginning with their earliest records and coming down through the centuries to the present day. Their chronology, their settlement on the banks of the Yellow River, the succession of the twenty-six dynasties which have successively swayed them, and the cause of their survival to the present day, while every other ancient nation has passed away, all form topics which make the history of China peculiarly interesting to students of national life. Mr. Boulger has not aimed to go into all these topics; and we, therefore, ought not to look for full answers to inquiries upon them. He tells us in a prefatory note that the principal portion of his work has been translated from the "Histoire Générale de la Chine," by Père Mailla. The foot-notes show that he has also consulted the carefully-written work of G. Pauthier (Paris, 1839) and some other books. It, therefore, makes no pretensions to being drawn from original sources and is only a careful digest of what has been prepared by others. The great work of Père Mailla is a translation from a native compend, called "Tung-kien Kang-muh," or, "Survey of History," and was printed in twelve quarto volumes, in 1777 -1783, thirty years after his death. It has been largely drawn upon by subsequent writers upon China. Mr. Boulger has brought to his task a desire to judge fairly by the Chinese and to give his readers the means of getting a clear view of the changes they have undergone. The most prominent characters among the long list of sovereigns have been described at some length, and the great dynasties they founded or upheld come more into view than the shorter ones. His book is, consequently, more a series of biographical sketches of these men than a full narrative of events. Among these distinguished men the great warrior who, about the times of the Maccabees, reduced the feudal states of the Chow dynasty to his sway and made the Middle Kingdom a single nation stands first. His deeds left a permanent and beneficial impression on his people. The independent kingdoms which had parceled out the empire amongst themselves were destroyed, their dynasties exterminated, and the unity of the empire achieved. Not free from the vanity of mortals, he sought by the high-sounding title Tsin Chi Hoangti, First Sovereign Emperor of the Tsins, to perpetuate the memory of a reign which might well be left to stand on its own merits. Like most Chinese rulers, he patronized astronomy and revised the calendar. He abolished useless ceremonies, reduced the officials to obedience, and introduced great economy of administration. He disarmed the provinces and embellished the capital with gardens and palaces. Ten thousand men could be drawn up in order of battle in one of the courts of his Palace of Delight. He districted the empire into thirty-six provinces and prepared to visit them in person. He refused to divide these provinces among his children and blood relations in fief, not believing that the country could be ruled by a divided sovereignty. "Good government," he declared, "is impossible under a multiplicity of masters." The system of strict subordination which now exists is, with a few modifications, that devised by Hoangti and remains as a sufficient evidence that he possessed the genius of a great ruler. The founder of the Han dynasty, the first two emperors of the Tang dynasty, the founder of the Sung dynasty, and Kublai Khan, who established his sway on its ruins, *HISTORY OF CHINA. By DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER, R. A, S., author of "England and Russia in Central Asia," "Yakoob Bey of Kashgar," etc. VoL I. London, W.: H. Allen & Co., 1881, Pp. Till, 401 to the honorable places claimed for them. In doing so, Mr. Boulger contents himself with the facts mentioned in his authorities and lets the Chinese describe their own heroes. Some of these men are well worthy of being known, and their existence and deeds will, no doubt, be quite new to most readers. The work is pleasantly written, too, and will afford those who take it up such a survey of Chinese history as will answer their reasonable inquiries; but the author's qualifications for his task are deficient in two or three important points. Among these, an entire ignorance of the language and, consequently, an inability to judge of the value and bearing of many things men tioned in his authorities make him liable to many mistakes. He has never lived among the people, and this rather weakens his judgment of their attainments in self-government and the security given to life and property by the laws and the rulers who execute them. An author cannot get a satisfactory conclusion on these points from others. Neither Mailla nor Pauthier gives any Chinese characters, and the mistakes arising from confusing their sounds are numerous. On page 42 Mr. Boulger speaks of King Wang the Third, but the names of the two previous sovereigns with this title are totally unlike. On page 6 he has confounded the name of Hoangti, the Yellow Emperor, with Hoangti, the common title for emperor, not knowing that the word Hoang or Hwang is represented by different characters, and that no monarch has ever been styled the Yellow Emperor since B. C. 2597. 22 On page 27, after discussing the origin of the name China, he adds that "Cathay or Khitay (the Russian name) was the name given by those coming overland from the north. The word Cathay is derived, through the Persians or Central Asian peoples, from the Chinese name Ki-tan, a Tartar or Toungusian tribe, which ruled Northern China from A. D. 907 to 1125. under nine sovereigns. The word Tartar, he says, "is used in its commonly accepted sense for all the tribes in N. E. Asia"; but the truth is that several distinct anions are confounded under this term, just as the word Indian in America covers a great deal of ignorance when it includes Algonquins, Aztecs, and Araucarians. This ignorance of the language has also led him into much confusion in his mode of writing proper names, both of places and people. The Chinese write the family name first, and then the given name or the style by whichever they choose to be known. An official or a literary man selects the latter when he enters active life, and drops the name used in youth. After death, his chil. dren bestow another name, by which his spirit is worshiped in the ancestral hall. A deceased emperor is known ever after by his temple-name (miao-hao) in history, and his reign-name is dropped whenever he is mentioned. These names are all given to him with some reference to their meanings, and during some dynasties it was the fashion to change the reign-name on any unusual event. Kao-tsung, of the Tang dynasty (A. D. 650-684), took fourteen such reign-names (nien-hao), which has caused some confusion in referring to him. Since the accession of Tai-tsu, of the Ming dynasty, in A. D. 1368, only one reign-name has been employed. The present Emperor in 1875 selected the name of Kwang-sü for his reign, meaning Illustrious Succession. He is the cousin of his childless predecessor, and this name alludes to a break in the regular descent, the first in the Manchu dynasty. Apparently unaware of all these points, Mr. Boulger has written the names without rule or uniformity, as Tongcho, Tsow Tsow, or Lichimin, instead of Tong Cho,Tsow Tsow, and Li-chi-min, and similar confusion prevails in the imperial titles. In a historian of a people and an empire of the importance of the Middle Kingdom some knowledge of the language and usages of its inhabitants is requisite to an accurate rendering and investigation of his authorities. In looking through the foot-notes, one san detect several inaccuracies of a minor |