who, holding tbe, plough with one hand, at the fame time whit
the. other calls the feed into the drills.
The advantages which thofe women poffefs in a higher fphere
o f life, i f any., are not much to be envied. Even at home, in
her own family, a woman mull neither eat at the fame table,
nor fit in the fame room with her hufband. And the male
children, at the age o f nine or ten, are entirely feparated from
their fillers. Thus the feelings o f affeition, not the inftinctive
produ£ts o f nature, but the offspring o f frequent intercourfe
and o f a mutual communication o f their little wants and plea-
fures, are nipped in the very bud o f dawning fentiment. A
cold and ceremonious conduit mult he obferved on all occafions
between the members o f the fame family. Thefe is no common
focus to attract and concentrate the love and refpect o f
children for their parents. Each lives retired and apart from
the other. T he little incidents and adventures o f the day,
which furnilh the converfation among children o f many a long
winter’s evening, by a comfortable fire-fide, in our own country,
are in China buried in filence. Boys, it is true, fonje-
times mix together in fehools, but the itiff and ceremonious behaviour,
which conllitutes no inconfiderable part o f their education,
throws a rellraint on all the little playful aftions incident
to their time o f life and completely fubdues all fpirit o f activity
and enterprise. A Chinefe youth o f the higher clafs is
inanimate, formal, and inactive, conftantly endeavouring to
affume the gravity o f years.
To
T o beguile the many tedious and heavy hours, that mull unavoidably
occur to the fecluded females totally unqualified foi:
mental purfuits, the tobacco-pipe is the ufual expedient. Every
female from the age o f eight or nine years wears, as an appendage
to her drefs, a fmall filken purfe or pocket to hold tobacco
and a pipe, with the ufe o f which many o f them are not
unacquainted at this tender age. Some indeed are conftantly
employed in working embroidery on filks, or in painting birds,
infeCts, and flowers on thin gauze. In the ladies’ apartments o f
the great houfe in which we lived at Pekin, we obferved fome
very beautiful fpecimens o f both kinds in the pannels o f the
partitions, and I brought home a few articles which I under-
fland have been much admired ; but the women who employ
their time in this manner are generally the wives and daughters
o f tradefmen and artificers, who are Ufually the weavers
both o f cottons and filks. I remember afking one o f the great
officers o f the court, who wore a filken veil beautifully embroidered,
if it was the work o f his lady, but the fuppofition
that his wife ihould condefcend to ufe her needle feemed to
give him offence.
Their manners in domeftic life are little calculated to produce
that extraordinary degree o f filial piety, or affection and
reverence towards parents, for which they have been eminently
celebrated, and to the falutary effefls o f which thé J'efuits have
attributed the liability o f the government. Filial duty is, in
faft, in China, lefs a moral fentiment,-than a precept which
by*length o f time has acquired the efficacy Of a pofitive laws
and it may truly be faid to exift mbre in thé maxims o f thé g t*
vernment,