departed men. A belief in the continued existence of the dead in a spirit-state, and in the duty of their descendants to maintain by religious worship a connection with them, have been characteristics of the Chinese people from their first appearance in history. The first and third Books of the last Part of the She profess to consist of sacrificial odes used in the temple services of the kings of Chow and Shang. Some of them are songs of praise and thanksgiving; some are songs of supplication; and others relate to the circumstances of the service, describing the occasion of it, or the parties present and engaging in it. The ancestors worshipped are invited to come and accept the homage and offerings presented; and in one (IV. i. [i.] VII.) it is said that "king Wăn, the Blesser," has descended, and accepted the offerings. The first stanza of III. i. I. describes king Wăn after his death as being "on high, bright in heaven, ascending and descending on the left and the right of God," and the 9th ode of the same Book affirms that Wăn, his father, and grandfather, were associated in heaven. The early Chinese, as I have just said, did not suppose that man ceased all to be, when his mortal life terminated. We know, indeed, from the Tso-chuen, that scepticism on this point had begun to spread among the higher classes before the time of Confucius, and we know that the sage himself would neither affirm nor deny it; but that their dead lived on in another state was certainly the belief of the early ages with which we have now to do, as it is still the belief of the great majority of the Chinese people. But the She is as silent as the Shoo-king as to any punitive retribution hereafter. There are rewards and dignity for the good after death, but nothing is said of any punishment for the bad. In one ode, indeed (II. v. VÌ. 6), a vague feeling betrays itself in the writer, that after every other method to deal with proud slanderers. had failed, Heaven might execute justice upon them;—but it may be that he had only their temporal punishment in view. The system of ancestral worship prevented the development of a different view on this subject. The tyrant-oppressor took his place in the temple, there to be feasted, and worshipped, and prayed to, in his proper order, as much as the greatest benefactor of his people. I have pointed out, on III. iii. IV. 5, how king Seuen, in his distress in consequence of the long-continued drought, prays to his parents, though his father king Le had been notoriously wicked and worthless; and how endeavours have been made to explain away the simple text, from a wish, probably, to escape from the honour which it would seem to give to one so undeserving of it. 4. The odes do not speak of the worship which was paid to God, unless it be incidentally. There were two grand occasions on which it was rendered by the Religious cere sovereign, the summer and winter solstices. monies. The winter sacrifice is often described as offered to Heaven, and the summer one to earth; but we have the testimony of Confucius, in the Doctrine of the Mean, ch. XIX., that the object of them both was to serve Shang Te. Of the ceremonies used on those occasions I do not here speak, as there is nothing said about them in the She. Whether besides these two there were other sacrifices to God, at stated periods in the course of the year, is a point on which the opinions of the Chinese scholars themselves are very much divided. I think that there were, and that we have some intimation of two of them. IV. i. [i.] X. is addressed to How-tseih, as having proved himself the correlate to Heaven, in teaching men to cultivate the grain which God appointed for the nourishment of all. This was appropriate to a sacrifice in spring, which was offered to God, to seek His blessing on the agricultural labours of the year, How-tseih, as the ancestor of the House of Chow, and the great improver of agriculture, being associated with Him in it. IV. i. [i.] VII., again, was appropriate to a sacrifice to God in autumn, in the Hall of Light, at a great audience to the feudal princes, when king Wăn was associated with Him, as being the founder of the dynasty of Chow. Of the ceremonies at the sacrifices in the royal temple of ancestors, in the first months of the four seasons of the year, we have much information in several odes. They were preceded by fasting and various purifications on the part of the king and the parties who were to assist in the performance of them. There was a great concourse of the feudal princes, and much importance. 2 IV. i. [i.] I., IV.; et al. III. ii. I. 7. 1 was attached to the presence among them of the representatives of the former dynasties; but the duties of the occasion devolved mainly on the princes of the same surname as the royal House. Libations of fragrant spirits were made to attract the Spirits, and their presence was invoked by a functionary who took his place inside the principal gate. The principal victim, a red bull, was killed by the king himself, using for the purpose a knife to the handle of which were attached small bells. With this he laid bare the hair, to show that the animal was of the required colour, inflicted the wound of death, and cut away the fat, which was burned along with southernwood, to increase the incense and fragrance. Other victims were numerous, and II. vi. V. describes all engaged in the service as greatly exhausted with what they had to do, flaying the carcases, boiling the flesh, roasting it, broiling it, arranging it on trays and stands, and setting it forth. Ladies from the harem are present, presiding and assisting; music peals; the cup goes round. The description is as much that of a feast as of a sacrifice; and in fact, those great seasonal occasions were what we might call grand family reunions, where the dead and the living met, eating and drinking together, where the living worshipped the dead, and the dead blessed the living. This characteristic of these ceremonies appeared most strikingly in the custom which required that the departed ancestors should be represented by living individuals of the same surname, chosen according to certain rules which the odes do not mention. They took for the time the place of the dead, received the honours which were due to them, and were supposed to be possessed by their Spirits. They ate and drank as those whom they personated would have done; accepted for them the homage rendered by their descendants; communicated their will to the principal in the sacrifice or feast, and pronounced on him and his line their benediction, being assisted in this point by a mediating priest, as we must call him for want of a better term. On the next day, III. i. I. 4, 5; IV. i [ii.] III. 2 II. vi. V. 2. ^ II. vi. V. after a summary repetition of the ceremonies of the sacrifice, these personators of the dead were specially feasted, and so, as it is expressed in III. ii. IV., "their happiness and dignity were made complete." We have an allusion to this strange custom in Mencius (VI. Pt i. V.), showing how a junior member of a family, when chosen to represent at the sacrifice one of his ancestors, was for the time exalted above his elders, and received the demonstrations of reverence due to the ancestor. This custom probably originated under the Chow dynasty, -one of the regulations made by the duke of Chow; and subsequently to it, it fell into disuse. 1 When the sacrifice to ancestors was finished, the king feasted his uncles and younger brothers or cousins, that is, all the princes and nobles of the same surname with himself, in another apartment. The musicians who had discoursed with instrument and voice during the worship and entertainment of the ancestors, followed the convivial party," to give their soothing aid at the second blessing." The viands, which had been provided, we have seen, in great abundance, and on which little impression could thus far have been made, were brought in from the temple, and set forth anew. The guests ate to the full and drank to the full; and at the conclusion they all bowed their heads, while one of them declared the satisfaction of the Spirits with the services rendered to them, and assured the king of their favour to him and his posterity, so long as they did not neglect those observances. During the feast the king showed particular respect to those among his relatives who were aged, filled their cups again and again, and desired that "their old age might be blessed, and their bright happiness ever increased." 2 The above sketch of the seasonal sacrifices to ancestors shows that they were mainly designed to maintain the unity of the family connection, and intimately related to the duty of filial piety. Yet by means of them the ancestors of the kings were raised to the position of the Tutelary Spirits of the dynasty; and the ancestors of each family became its Tutelary Spirits. Several of the pieces in Part IV., it is to be observed, are appropriate to sacrifices offered to some one monarch. They would be celebrated on particular occasions connected with his achievements in the past, or when it was supposed that his help would be specially valuable in contemplated enterprises. There were also other services performed in the temple of ancestors which were of less frequent occurrence, and all known by the name of te. That term was applied in a restricted sense to the annual sacrifice of the summer season; but there were also "the fortunate te," when the Spirit-tablet of a deceased monarch was solemnly set up in its proper place in the temple, 25 months after his death; and "the great te," called also hëah, celebrated once in five years, when all the ancestors of the royal House were sacrificed to, beginning with the mythical emperor Kuh, to whom their lineage was traced. There is no description in the She of the ceremonies used on those occasions. With regard to all the ceremonies of the ancestral temple, Confucius gives the following account of them and the purposes they were intended to serve in the Doctrine of the Mean, ch. XIX. 4:-" By means of them they distinguished the royal kindred according to their order of descent. By arranging those present according to their rank, they distinguished the more noble and the less. By the apportioning of duties at them, they made a distinction of talents and worth. In the ceremony of general pledging, the inferiors presented the cup to their superiors, and thus something was given to the lowest to do. At the [concluding] feast, places were given according to the hair, and thus was marked the distinction of years." customs of the ally. 5. The habits and manners of the ancient Chinese Manners and generally, as they may be learned from the Chinese gener- She, will be found set forth in a variety of particulars in an essay by M. Edouard Biot, whose early death was a great calamity to the cause of Chinese study. It appeared in the Journal Asiatique for November and December, 1843. It was not possible for him in his circumstances, and depending so much as he did on Lacharme's translation of the odes, to avoid falling into some mistakes. The pioneers in a field of |