TEMPLE OF GOD OF LITERATURE.
By Rev. E. J. Piper.

It is a curious method, that of a Chinese examination. The Literary Chancellor of the province travels round from city to city. Suddenly there is an influx of new faces, and the streets are full of strangers looking about them. Missionaries always say, "The students are swaggering about." When the Consul does not send out a request for Europeans to keep within-doors or to be careful, I straightway order my sedan-chair, and pretend I want to buy something near the examination-hall. Any one, who knows the monotony of always blue gowns and a slouch, would understand that the idea of "some one swaggering" is irresistible. But so far I have never succeeded in seeing even one military student swagger. I know the mandarin swagger, and the Tientsin swagger, which is the most audacious of all, and would make every one in Bond Street turn round to look; and I know the young merchant swagger, which is amusing, and not very unlike a very young London clubman's swagger, when he does swagger. I am afraid it a little went out when high collars came in. But the students I have seen have mostly been pale, very anxious-looking young men, who drop in at our luncheon-time, and look with great interest at our foreign things, sitting on for ever, when they find we have actually specimens of the books of that most useful Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge. Then they turn them over and are happy, till they suddenly wake up sadly to the fact we have no more. "And I wanted to take back copies to all my friends in the town of ——," said one student that I know. But then he did not pass. He is a reformer, a dreamer, as the Secretaries of Legation at Peking dub all of the party of progress in China; for that city seems to deaden the very souls of the Diplomatic Corps, walled up inside it, away from all their own nationals, and full of their parties and theatricals and petty jealousies, unaware apparently that there is a great Chinese nation throbbing across some two thousand miles of country south and west.

Then there are the brilliant students, who pass every time, and are going up for the Hanlin College. They are very much afraid of turning their attention away from the classics for a moment to look even at histories of the Japanese War or of the nineteenth century. They know all about the Röntgen rays, but they dare not be interested. They have got to pass, and to get means to do so they must teach other young men to pass preliminary examinations; and they have brought the latter up with them from some small country town, and are responsible for them. More than the weight of empire seems resting upon their young shoulders; but the fact that they come to see us, and come again, shows that they are interested in foreign affairs. To one I undertook to teach English in a six weeks' holiday last Chinese New Year season. He learnt the alphabet in two days; then he learnt easy words; but why c a t should spell cat, because b a t spelt bat, he could not imagine. The very idea of an alphabet is so strange to a Chinaman. He thinks what you want him to do is to learn it by heart, and he conscientiously learns it. Then when you dodge him he is mortified. As to spelling, I know no way to make him understand it, until he has learnt how to spell; till then it is a mystery to him. He was a most brilliant young scholar, who had already passed his second examination with great éclat, whom I essayed to teach, and every now and then I seemed to see glimmerings of understanding, but then again all became dark, as I tried desperately to teach him to read, so that he might go on teaching himself in his distant country town.

But when the examinations are really on, no more students, swaggering or not swaggering, are seen about the streets. They are all shut up for twenty-four hours, and they come out in batches, according as to when they have done their essays, at the three watches of the night, tired out and hungry. They go up for this preliminary according to their district; then those who are most successful of the different districts are shut up to compete against one another. At each examination a poem must be written in addition to two essays. Not uncommonly students die at these examinations. But the marvel to me is that the Literary Chancellor survives, for he keeps on at it pretty well all the time. Sometimes he is accused of being very much influenced by money bribes as to those he passes; sometimes he is reputed honest.

MAP OF CHINA, SHOWING CHIEF EXAMINATION CENTRES.
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When the second of two brothers passed in the same year his examination as chüjen (or M.A.), he was carried round Chungking in triumph in a sedan-chair; and a favourite subject of embroidery is the triumphal return of the successful student, with a silk official umbrella borne over his head, himself mounted on a spotted pony, and all the village in its best clothes come out to do him honour.