Those cool Spring days he bade her to bathe from the Sparkling Pool'B green sward; The fount felt warm as its ripples kissed a bosom as white as nard. 'Twas when, with her maids to assist her rise, she languid and lovely came, 'Twas then that her charms full favour found, and beauty its full reward.

Her hair a cloud, her face a flower, her pins of gems and gold , The talc in the Hibiscus Bower of warm Spring nights they told: Spring nights, alas! How short! The sun was high before they rose, And, dallying there, the Emperor no morning Courts could hold.

The joys of love, the banquets spread, for these no dallying, none! And Spring by Spring thus sauntered past, and night by night rolled on. Three thousand girls in his Harem were lovely every one, And yet they saw three thousand loves kindled by her alone!

In gilded house and matchless robes, each night her charms they prove: The Banquet Hall of Jade-and then the ecstasy of love (Tier sisters and her brothers all have ranks and offices. Alas for her ancestral hall! ill-omened brilliances! For thus it chanced throughout the realm each father's, mother's heart No longer hopes for birth of sons when birth of girls brings this!)

The Halls of Li that massive rise, tall as the sky, and fair, Resound with elfin melodies, wind-wafted everywhere.

Of leisured song, and measured dance, full-toned guitar and flute, The livelong day the Emperor unwearying hears the note The roar of drums! Yu Yang , his drums! (his rival for her love). They drown "The Dance of the Rainbow Skirt," "The Song of the Plumed Coat."

Around the Imperial City gates the dust is rising high; And South ride charioteers, and West ten thousand horsemen fly. Bejewelled women, toiling past, pause in their flight to rest; From out the Capital they haste ten leagues towards the West.

The fleeing soldiers mutiny: "Our Conqueror's here!" they cry. Reluctant, arch-browed Beauty, you before the host must die The scattered jewels from her hair no man will e'er bring home: Lo! here a plume, a golden bird, and there of jade a comb! The Emperor hides his face. Too Late! Too late to save his Love! He turns to look-her blood, his tears flow mingling as they come.

The yellow sand is wafted wide, the breeze is moaning, hark! Through cloud-capped passes, up they wind to the Sword Tower, lone and stark; For few are the folk who choose the way beneath Mount Omi's shade, Where flags and pennons gleam less bright, and Day itself seems dark!

The Sze Chuen rivers azure flow, the Sze Chuen hills are fair; But morn and night the Emperor sees his own desolation there.: The moonbeams on his Rest-House shine, and memory wounds him sore; The wind-bells tinkle through the rain, and sighs his bosom tear.

With Fortune's turn, and Chance's change, the Dragon Car comes home: Why linger there oil the homeward road? Ah! How could he bear to come. Past Horse Cliff Hill ? for there below in the dust of the grave She lies! 'Tis vain that he looks for her jade-white face-there's nought but the deathly tomb!

Then Squire and Sire their glances meet, and robes with tears are stained. They head their steeds for the City gate, and home they race unreined.

So home he comes: the Pool, the Park-all as it was before The Sparkling Pool's Hibiscus Bower, the willows round the door. That pink Hibiscus is her face, her brows those willows frail. Come home to these ?-To stem his tears oh, what can here avail?

They fall when the breath of Spring unfolds the blossom of peach and plum; They fall as the leaves of the wu-tung fall when the rains of Autumn come.

The Southern side of the Western Hall is choked with Autumn hay; The steps piled red with the fallen leaves, and who to sweep them, pray? The Orchard boasted its "Youthful Players " - now look how their hair turns white! The Eunuchs young of the Pepper Room , and the Waiting Maids once gay!

At e'en, when the fireflies flit through the Hall, he broods on his grief, forlorn; Alone, with the lantern guttering out, no sleep to his eyes is borne. And slowly, slowly, the watches pass, and night from the start seems long; And brightly, brightly, the Autumn stars,t as he lies and longs for the dawn.

By pairs the roof-tiles mated go, now thick with a cold hoarfrost; And mated the kingfisher plumes of the quilt, but the warmth of his Mate is lost ! 0 weary, weary, the years that part this life and the longed4or Dead, The Dead that never returns to sight, nor a dream, not a shade, nor & ghost!

In far Lin Chiung is a Taoist priest, a priest of the Hung Tu kind, Well able to reach to the souls of the dead by skill of his well-versed mind. The Emperor's restless, listless mien his friends to pity moves They send for the wizard priest to seek, persist, till perchance he find.

He ranges the air, he drives through the sky, as swift as the lightning's glare; He mounts to the heaven, he drops to the hell, and seeks for her everywhere. The height of the firmament he sweeps, the depths of the underworld But all is in vain, for vast abyss reveals not trace of her.

When lo! He hears that away to sea a faery isle is found, The Isle that appears in the strange mirage with the boundless blue around.

Its towers and turrets are burnished bright, like clouds on a sunset sea; Within there are graceful gossamer folk as far as his eye can see. Among them all there is one supreme, her name " the Ethereal "called; Of snow-white skin, and of flower-like face-who else could it be but She ?

The golden gate to the Southern court he raps on its jade-stone rare; He calls to the jade-white faery-maid to announce to the Fairest Fair. And She, when she hears that the Emperor Han, the Son of Heaven, has sent, On 'broidery canopied couch awakes, and starts from her dreaming there.

She gathers her robes.-She leaps from bed.-O what were it best to do? Her pearl-covered curtains, silvery screens she tosses them to and fro. The cloud of her hair is half astray, as, newly awaked from sleep, Her flowery headdress all awry, she turns to the Hall to go.

The breeze, as it catches her faery sleeves-they rise and fall to its note It might be" The Dance of the Rainbow Skirt," " The Song of the Plumed Coat"!

But lost and lone is the jade-white face, and tears fall fast from her eyes, As Spring from the pear-branch raindrops shakes and down from the flow'rs they float.

She smothers her sobs and stems her tears, her message of thanks to send: "Though parted so wide by the vast abyss nor our voice nor our loves may blend, Still dream of delights in the Halls of the Sun, and the days of embrace cut short; But hope for the Hall in the Isles of the B]est* where the nightsf know never an end."

Then, turning around, she seeks in vain for trace of the human world: "His Palace of Peace I never can see, but only the dust-clouds furled. So all that remains is a token old to show that my love lasts on, An inlaid pin and a golden comb, till now in my headdress curled.

"The comb I break, and the yellow gold of the pin I divide in two: One piece of the pin and the comb I keep, and its twin I will send to you. I pray that your heart as this gold be firm, be steadfast in al] you do, Till heaven or the world sees us meet again, and the token will then come true.":

"A costlier 'token," the priest persists, " entrust me before I go A tokeu containing some secret pledge that no one but you could know." "The seventh day of the seventh moon, in his Palace of Lasting Life, At midnight - none to overhear-we were whispering soft and low:

"He swore that in heaven two birds we'd spread one pair of wings on the wind; I swore that on earth two trees we'd grow with branches that intertwined." Though heaven may last, and the earth grow old, yet one day they come to an end:

But here is & sorrow endures, endures, and never an end shall find.

EDITORIAL COMMENTS

CHINESE ART, BURLINGTON MAGAZINE MONOGPRAPH, 1925 Mr. Tatlock of the Burlington Magazine makes a frank statement in the Preface of Chinese Art" that "no book of the least importance deals with Chinese Art as a whole" ; but we may be pardoned for noticing that before he has finished this Preface he himself mentions Bushell's "Chinese Art." We must protest against Bushell's "Chinese Art" being spoken of as not being "of the least importance." A comparison of it with this volume edited by Mr. Tatlock reveals the contrast between the work of a scholar and that of a magazines ; and we presume that Mr. Tatlock wishes us to understand that writings of a scholar such as Bushell are not "of the least importance" to editors of such popular magazines as the Burlington. Perhaps we should be inclined to agree with him. But let us compare the orderly contents of Bushell's "Chinese Art" with this new volume of the Burlington.

J.C. F.

REVIEWS

PROCESS OF PHYSICAL GROWTH AMONG THE CHINESE. Vol.1. by S. M. Shirokogoroff. The Commercial Press, Ltd., Shanghai. Price $6.00 Proceeding upon the assumption that racial distinctions are subject to Variations in endocrine functioning on the one hand, and to environment on the other Dr Shirokogoroff undertakes to explain why the Chinese differ from other peoples It is sincerely to be regretted that the author adduces not one jot of evidence in support of his major premise, thus relegating his thesis to the realm of pure -speculation. This is all the more to be deplored because of his suggestion that the characteristic mental aptitudes of the Chinese are traceable to differences in the constitution of hormones and hence of functioning of the ductless glands, as compared with those of other races ; and, more particularly, because of his contention that the process (of growth) is regulated by the interaction of the glands of internal secretion and metabelism which depend upon heredity." (the italics are Ours.) Could Dr. Shirokogoroff prove this last, his would be an epochal contribution to science, coordinating the discoveries of cytology with the phenomenon of life in the human, and establishing the truth of evolution beyond peradventure or doubt. In one respect, the author's hypothesis is less fantastic than it appears at first blush. According to him, the Chinese differ from all other ethnical groups by reason of a marked acceleration of growth at the age of eleven to twelve and a corresponding retardation four years later. In support of this he submits tables of measurements and comparisons with those of other peoples, and a statistical critique of the data It is to be remarked that the age at which this acceleration is stated to manifest itself, closely approximates the age of puberty, coincident with which, by the way marked physical development is to be observed in races other than the Chinese In seeking, therefore, to account for this acceleration of growth by a corresponding ac osleration in functioning of the ductless glands, Dr. Shirokogoroff enunciates nothing startling nor new. It is his implied ascription of the subsequent retardation of growth, four years later, to this same influence that taxes credulity, since it pre supposes an expenditure of procreative energy, in that brief interval, which is normally distributed over a number of decades and which is opposed to all reason despite the abnormal powers popularly credited to the Chinese.

Again, respecting Chinese mental aptitudes, Dr. Shirokogoroff apparently would have us believe that modes of thought antithetic to those of the Occidental are begotten by differences in hormones or perhaps it is the converse that he intends i.e., that the modes of thought beget differences in hormones that in turn are responsible for the unusual physical characteristics which the author is at such pains - to emphasize. While such hypothesis is not untenable, it is pertinent to inquire why the foreign child horn in China who acquires the Chinese mental perspective and hence the language with phenomenal ease, does not subsequently exhibit the acceleration and retardation of growth established by the author's tables ? Are we to call heredity to account for this or simply to conclude that the author is mistaken .

Dr. Shirokogoroff has been pleased to rest his case upon pure assumption without calling a single witness. Had he been content with merely suggesting a connexion between the measurements observed by him and others, as compared with the corresponding in other peoples, with a possible difference of endocrine functioning, we should be indebted to him for opening up an extremely interesting field for speculation. But no. Apparently taking advantage of the fact that diabetes bronze (Addison's Disease) is due to interference with adrenal function and the resultant medical hypothesis that pigmentation of the skin may be due to idiosyncracy of that function, Dr. Shfrokogoroff appears to argue that, since it is further held that abortion of function of a given ductless gland is due to hormone insufficiency, hormone variation suffices to account for the difference in measurements he so painstakingly records. That this process of reasoning involves a chamois-like agility in clearing the chasms of fantastic speculation in order to reach the isolated peaks of established fact, seems in no wise to have daunted him.

Dr. Shirokogeroff, however, is not to be condemned out of hand on the principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. In his capacity of anthropologist of the Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences, he undertook a series of valuable studies of eastern Asiatic peoples. In the present work, he has supplemented the observations of Dr. Appleton with data commanding respectful attention. It is further to be noted that this is but the first volume of the new series and is confined to a comparison of bodily growth in two groups of Chinese only. There is reason to hope that in subsequent volumes, the erudite author will realize the fallacy of excursions outside of the domain of the anthropologist, more particularly into the realm of fantasy On the other band, if it be his intention to adduce, in subsequent volumes, evidence in support of the connexion of the physical characteristics he has observed with internal secretions, we await these with the greatest interest and at the same time reiterate our regret that Dr. Shirokogoroff has not seen fit to vouchsafe us at least a glimpse of substantiation of his' thesis in the present volume.

R.R. L. F.

THE CHINA YEAR BOOK, 1925, Edited by H. G. W. Woodhead, c. B. B. Tientsin Press, Ltd.

In previous issues of this' Journal we have reviewed this valuable work, which annually makes' it appearance with its subject matter brought up to date. That subject matter includes practically everything one wants to know about China-her trade and resources', her currency and finance, her internal polities and external relations, her fauna and flora, her educational and judiciary systems, her laws' and treaties, her geography and topography, her minerals', her agriculture and her forestry. The growth of this compendium from what it was before the War to its present dimensions speaks for the energy and thoroughness' of its editor, Mr. H. G. W. Woodinad, tin well known editor of The Peking and Tientsin Times, and author of a recent book " Tin Truth about the Chinese Republic."The present edition has been carefully gone over and revised. It should prove invaluable, not only to the business man of the Treaty Ports', but to educationalists and missionaries as well, not to mention the many delegates to China from foreign countries on various missions or commissions of importance.

A.DE C. S.

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