CHINA AND HER APOLOGIST.
It is always interesting, if not always satisfactory, to learn what lookers-on think of the game being played before them. It matters little that the spectator may be profoundly ignorant of the rules which bind those engaged or that his opinion may be both relatively and absolutely valueless. It is "human nature" to attach importance to criticism, however groundless its claims to respect. Many years ago, our now venerable friend Punch gave expression to this feeling in one of its sketches entitled "Art Criticism." Miss Mary is showing her first production in oils to the cook, who exclaims in rapture, "Lawks, Miss Mary, it's the very moral of it"; and the young lady's gratified reception of the criticism teaches an obvious moral. Communities are not wholly unlike Miss Mary in this respect. They feel annoyed or soothed by the criticism, even of intellectual cook-maids, to an extent which they scarcely confess to themselves. And it is not therefore to be wondered at that Sir Charles Dilke's recent article in Macmillan has both attracted attention and provoked a sore feeling on the part of foreign residents in China.
Sir Charles commences his article by avowing that he was not free from prejudices when he visited China last autumn, and follows up this admission by the assertion that he still believes his prejudices were well founded. He has thus saved me the trouble of characterizing the peculiar conclusions which a hasty
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