D. 67
have published a daily Peking _Gazette_, of which (thanks to
our intelligent "host of the Garter," Mr. Janssen) we have secured
a copy. We are all but of yesterday compared to the Heathen
Chinee, and it is impossible to sit down and scribble glibly of
such a people. In Japan there is no record. It is a new race
appearing almost for the first time among civilized nations. It
has given the world nothing, but how widely different here! It is
to China the world owes the compass, gunpowder, porcelain, and
even the art of printing, and to her also alone the spectacle of a
people ruled by a code of laws and morals embracing the most
minute particulars, written two thousand four hundred years ago,
and taught to this day in the schools as the rules of life. It is
an old and true saying that almost any system of religion would
make one good enough if it were properly obeyed; certainly that of
Confucius would do so. I have been deeply impressed with his
greatness and purity. Dr. Davis writes in his work on China:
"Confucius embodied in sententious maxims the first principles of
morals and of government, and the purity and excellence of some of
his precepts will bear comparison with even those of the Gospel."
In Thornton's History of China I find this noteworthy passage: "It
may excite surprise, and even incredulity, to state that the
golden rule of our Saviour had been inculcated by Confucius five
centuries before almost in the same words.
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