A Chinese encyclopaedia deals with a given subject not by providing an up-to-date article written by some living authority, but by exhibiting extracts from authors of all ages, arranged chronologically, in which the subject in question is discussed.

The range of topics, however, is such that the above does not always apply--as, for instance, in the biographical section, which consists merely of lives of eminent men taken from various sources.

In the great encyclopaedia under consideration, in addition to an enormous number of lives of men, covering a period of three thousand years, there are also lives of over twenty-four thousand eminent women, or nearly as many as all the lives in our own _National Dictionary of Biography_.

An original copy of this marvellous production, which by the way is fully illustrated, may be seen at the British Museum; a small-sized edition, more suitable for practical purposes and printed from movable type, was issued about twenty years ago.
Skipping an emperor under whose reign was initiated that violent persecution of Roman Catholics which has continued more or less openly down to the present day, we come to the second of the two monarchs before mentioned, whose long and beneficent reigns are among the real glories of the present dynasty.
The Emperor Ch'ien Lung (_Loong_) ascended the throne in 1735, when twenty-five years of age; and though less than two hundred years ago, legend has been busy with his person.

According to some native accounts, his hands are said to have reached below his knees; his ears touched his shoulders; and his eyes could see round behind his head.