Civil-Service Examinations.
Such are a few of the external differences between the Chinese customs and ours.

But the most essential peculiarity of this nation is the high value which they attribute to knowledge, and the distinctions and rewards which they bestow on scholarship.

All the civil offices in the Empire are given as rewards of literary merit.

The government, indeed, is called a complete despotism, and the emperor is said to have absolute authority.

He is not bound by any written constitution, indeed; but the public opinion of the land holds him, nevertheless, to a strict responsibility.