Foreign Lands

IT is frequently remarked that a strong parallelism exists between the reduction of the ancient world to Roman rule and the colonization of distant lands, still incomplete, by the English race; and if the prime distinction be kept in mind — that in the former case the aim was to establish one government over peoples of diverse civilizations by means of arms, and in the latter it is to establish one civilization among peoples of different modes of government by means of mechanical appliances and commercial regulations — the parallel is useful in bringing out the character of the principal movement of our time, and in heightening its apparent to something like its real importance. In all the outlying lands this movement has taken the form of an actual colonization, as in our country, or of that quasi-colonization which consists in influencing the ideas and habits of less developed nations, as in India. Now, in the practical exhaustion of the waste lands, this latter method is becoming more and more prevalent, and must soon absorb our interest, as its cousequence is better appreciated through its reactions on the English race itself. Nor is there any arrogance in claiming this extension of civilization over alien countries as really an achievement of the English race. Notwithstanding the explorations of other nationalities and their alliance with us at many points, the settlement of America and the opening of Asia were our work ; the future of Africa, Mexico, and the old Spanish provinces seems likely to rest in the hands of England and this country; and certainly the retroactive effects from the lower civilizations in India and China will first be borne by our kin. Whether the Indian and Chinese civilizations, inbred until they have obtained a certain rigidity even in the mental structure of the natives, can be permanently modified toward better ways of living and more profitable modes of manual and mental employment; whether Western ideals can win at all upon Oriental passivities ; whether, without such a change, there can be equal competition between these nations and ourselves; or whether their “ cheap food " will prove an offset to “ the thews that throw the world,” — such questions must now take the place held fifty years ago by the survey and settlement of the great West; for on the answer to them the rate and character of further progress largely depend. The impact of the Chinese, in particular, on our western coast, and the measures already taken against them, are significant in this connection: partly because the Chinese are now shown to be a colonizing race themselves, in spite of serious superstitious and social obstacles, and partly because our conduct in shutting our gates evinces a certain timidity. We have now, in fact, twenty years to reflect on the profit and loss of Chinese immigration, and it is to be hoped that some portion of this time may be taken to inform ourselves respecting the peculiar people of Asia, although there may be a doubt as to whether Dr. Williams’ work ¹ is the best for our future legislators to begin with. These two bulky volumes, in which, says the author, there is not a doubtful or superfluous sentence, comprise a complete survey of the geography, history and antiquities, arts, manufactures, games, religions, literature, education, government, customs, science, and ten thousand other things which enter into the civilization, or are among the belongings, of the Celestials. The predominant fault which makes the work unreadable (but perhaps it was not meant to be read, any more than a dictionary) is one common enough in things Chinese, — a lack of perspective. It is really an encyclopædia of China, made up of the immediate information of the author and of abstracts from the best authorities, and in it can be found anything, from a list of spiders or snails to one of dynasties that almost out-Noah Noah ; for the date here regarded as the starting-point of all things mundane is the flood, 3155 B. C., with its attendant dispersion of Shem, Ham, and Japhet to the three continents. Indeed, if we were to mark a second defect in this work, it would be the coloring given to it by the peculiar propagandist predeterminations of a missionary. The acceptance of the belief that the world was created six thousand years ago might be passed over ; but the explanation of all deficiencies in the Chinese by the word idolaters, and of all excellences by the formula God’s purposes, shows a mental twist which must be called perverse. In the region of facts, however, the minuteness and variety of knowledge indicate that we have here the accumulations of a long and laborious life by a man whose judgment is excellent when his prejudices have no play.

To make a selection which shall have some general interest, and which, indeed, will not be without its lesson to any who may chance to have read the remarkable brochure in which Mr. Zincke has so plausibly estimated the Englishry of a century hence at a thousand millions, Dr. Williams’ examination of the census which gives so large a population to the empire seems especially comprehensive and just. He concludes that the numbers are in the main to be relied on; and although he notes how large a portion of the imperial domain is waste land, he supports his couclusion by reminding us of the double crop, the economy of land available for agriculture, the utilization of all kinds of food, the fertility of the soil, the salubrity of the climate, the peace of nearly one hundred and fifty years (1700—1850), the custom of early marriage, and what is practically the religious duty of propagation. In addition to these considerations he brings forward two others, which emphasize the fact that the limit of population is not the land supply, but the food supply, and that these terms are not identical. In the first place, one may say that in China nothing is grown on purpose for animals, and when one reflects how much more land is necessary to support a horse or cow than a man the fact is very significant; secondly, the consumption of fish is greater than anywhere else, unless it be in Japan. The fishing fleets, the nets of the great rivers, the stocking of the irrigation tanks, the conversion of the rice fields temporarily into fish pools, and the like illustrate the extent to which the water is made to serve equally with the land for human support, and show us how far we may be from the limit of the food supply even when the cultivable surface of the globe shall be exhausted. Whether our descendants will ever be willing to solve the food problem as the Chinese have done, by yielding up the cattle which are our inheritance from our pastoral forefathers, and by betaking themselves to the ocean to provide for the deficiencies of land tillage, is certainly very doubtful; but if Mr. Zincke’s thousand millions of English-speaking people arise in the next century, they are likely to consider the suggestion respectfully.

With this race, nevertheless, which now outnumber the English three to one, we are coming into conflict or competition. They seem to us rather contemptible enemies; how should it be otherwise, when instead of playing baseball they fly kites, and are ruled by literary men versed in the classics of thousands of years ago instead of French and German, physics, botany, and chemistry ? They present many curious inconsistencies, as it seems to a Western mind, as if their intelligence were made up, so to speak, of opaque and transparent elements in layers. They are rationalistic, but superstitious, and the belief in Fetichism and Shahmanism survives among them; they are ruled by an absolute monarch, but are educated in democratic principles in many regards ; they are one people, but composed of three distinct and unreconciled races, and many tamed or restive tributaries ; they have advanced in theoretic ethics ; they are frank enough to confess that no one has caught their principal metaphysical idea since Confucius, but they know nothing of science; they possess a few arts, but they have carried none of these very far toward perfection, and have thereby shown that their inventive faculty, if not slight, is astonishingly slow: and so one might go on ad infinitum, like Dr. Williams, to end with the conviction that their race qualities have been much overrated. They are most marked among nations by their longevity, — a result which our author ascribes to a sort of left-handed operation of the fifth commandment, on account of their worship of ancestors, but which is due, perhaps, rather to their isolation by natural barriers and the readiness with which they have acquiesced in the usurpations which occurred to break the dynastic successions ; for, stable as they seem, they have still the same social levity that has always characterized Asiatic hordes, the same susceptibility to ecstasy, particularly of a superstitious kind, as was seen in the Tai-ping rebellion, so similar in all except spiritual substance to the rise of Islamism. If they are not, like savage races, physically incapacitated for our material civilization, as seems to be proved by the ease with which they appropriate it, they may be unable to assimilate its higher portion ; and in that case the struggle with them will offer many novel and curious problems to our ethical sense. The prospect is that a long, perhaps an unending, tutelage will be necessary, and will even be insisted on, as the doctrines of education, now in vogue and rising, overcome the doctrines of ’89 in the popular mind.

In Mexico the question presents so different a phase as hardly to seem analogous ; but the point of view taken by Mr. Bishop ² constantly exhibits Mexico as a land being rapidly subjected to an English civilization by the introduction of railroads, the development of industries, and in general by the awakening of an “ American ” spirit. Mexico, indeed, if one leaves out its tropical and Old World picturesqueness, does not differ from one of our Western States in the character of the progress going on, but only in degree. The bands of prospectors, speculators in real estate, agents for the introduction of novel manufactures, venders of new methods of ore reduction, searchers for mines, civil engineers surveying or track-laying, newspaper correspondents, scientific explorers, archæologists, tourists, — this is the personnel of Colorado as characteristically as of Mexico. There is a novelty, however, a something that approaches romance, in this incursion of the van of new or broken men into the kingdom that the high-bred Castilians conquered in so different a way, though the aim of these invaders, too, be to save Mexico and make their fortunes ; and this contrast of the old and the new, this relief of the Western border against a halfSpanish, half-Aztec background, this foray of enterprise and industry into the heart of the indolent, fête-loving, conser vative republic, has been caught by the author of these sketches, and used most effectively. He draws well the features of the landscape, the physiognomy and attitude of the natives, the quaint, serious, comfortable architecture of the Spanish, the sombre, sphinx-like ruins of the Aztec time, — draws both with pen and pencil the luxuriance of the lowlands, the savageness of the mountain peaks, and the look, human and natural, of most that lies between, — and has thus made, as readers of Harper’s Magazine know, a real picture of what he saw. In connection with the larger relations of society, of which he is by no means unconscious, the most noticeable observations he reports are the jealousy of the Mexicans toward Americans, and the indifference of the pure-blooded natives toward everything except their subsistence. The fate of this race is certainly one of the most melancholy in history; they seem likely to be gradually exterminated, except such of them as may be saved by the Spanish strain. As every one knows, the crusade is being pushed very rapidly now, and there is every reason to believe that in all but name and government old Mexico must eventually be counted among the Northern lands, and so share the destiny of her “ lost provinces,” as Mr. Bishop styles the Southwest and California. Of these his account is among the few truthful ones we have seen ; but it should be remarked that he has allowed his description of life in Arizona to be colored too crudely with the border wax-paint.

From China and Mexico to Italy, the goal of all journeys, is far indeed, and to the Italy of Mr. Symonds it is an almost impassable distance. In this book ³ he has gathered up several scattered essays, some very old, some recently published, and dealing, as a body, with many subjects. Only a small portion are really travel-sketches, — a fact which we regret, for these few describe the districts treated of in much detail, and at the same time let us into the secret of the charm of Italy for one of the Englishmen on whom her attraction has been most powerful.

So much of the impression that Italy makes on the eye is derived from the imagination, so much is due to historical and literary association reaching far back into the ancient world, that a traveler who attempts to describe that land ought to be scholar and poet as well as artist. Perhaps Mr. Symonds’ qualifications come as near to such requirements as can be hoped for in an age of specialists; our only complaint is that he has not given more of his travels instead of his studies, and thus justified the natural sense of his title. His Italian Byways lead him, for example, into a long criticism of the dramatist Webster, which is easily forgiven on account of its excellence; but why should they lead him into the mazy discussion of the relative rank of the arts, the nature of music, and such dissertations, which might be as appropriately included in a book of Byways in NoMan’s Land? To most of the historical essays, again, the objection holds that much of their story has been told in his more important works. We say this only to warn the unwary that, delightful as the volume is, it is not a book of travels, but a collection of travel, history, poetry, criticism, philosophy, and what not; always entertaining, often suggestive, as would be expected of the opera minora of a refined scholar.