individual, as it has never been outgrown by the race.

Our boy now begins to go to school; to a day school, it need hardly
be specified, for a boarding school would be entirely out of keeping
with the family life. Here, he is given the "Trimetrical Classic"
to start on, that he may learn the characters by heart, picking up
incidentally what ideas he may. This book is followed by the
"Century of Surnames," a catalogue of all the clan names in China,
studied like the last for the sake of the characters, although the
suggestion of the importance of the family contained in it is
probably not lost upon his youthful mind. Next comes the "Thousand
Character Classic," a wonderful epic as a feat of skill, for of the
thousand characters which it contains not a single one is repeated,
an absence of tautology not properly appreciated by the enforced
reader. Reminiscences of our own school days vividly depict the
consequent disgust, instead of admiration, of the boy. Three more
books succeed these first volumes, differing from one another in
form, but in substance singularly alike, treating, as they all do,
of history and ethics combined. For tales and morals are
inseparably associated by pious antiquity. Indeed, the past would
seem to have lived with special reference to the edification of the
future. Chinamen were abnormally virtuous in those golden days,
barring the few unfortunates whom fate needed as warning examples of
depravity for succeeding ages. Except for the fact that instruction
as to a future life forms no part of the curriculum, a far-eastern
education may be said to consist of Sunday-school every day in the
week. For no occasion is lost by the erudite authors, even in the
most worldly portions of their work, for preaching a slight homily
on the subject in hand. The dictum of Dionysius of Halicarnassus
that "history is philosophy teaching by example" would seem there to