Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/344

 when the cold begins, and go you say the winter comes; but as for me I say it is the spring; if it were otherwise, how could these pear-blossoms be tumbling leaf by leaf? How could the willow-blossoms fly in whirls? The blossoms of the pear-tree crowd together and make a silvered ground; the blossoms of the willow lift themselves skywards like to a waving dress and fall again to earth."

Beside this highly imaginative description of the falling snow, we may place the character of the deceitful courtesan drawn in Ho-lang-tan, or the "Singing Girl," a play detailing the ruin of a Chinese family by a courtesan, and excellently illustrating that inculcation of family virtues to which we shall presently advert as one of the striking characteristics of the Chinese drama. "You love," says the matron Lieou-chi to her husband, who has determined to make a second wife of Tchang-iu-ngo the courtesan, "you love those looks in which the streams of autumn seem to play; you worship those eyebrows painted and delicately arched. But know you not that you ruin your character? Bethink you that this forehead, wearing the splendour of the Fou-yong flower, brings ruin upon households; that this mouth, with its carnation-hues of peach and cherry, devours the souls of men. Her perfumed breath exhales the odours of the clove tree; but much I fear that all her