CHINA AND RUSSIA.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The enclosed extract from "The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crnsoe " may interest you.—I am, Sir, &c., "And therefore I must confess it seemed strange to me when I came home and heard our people say such fine things of the power, riches, glory, magnificence, and trade of the Chinese, because I saw and knew that they were a contemptible herd or crowd of ignorant, sordid slaves, subjected to a govern- ment qualified only to rule such a people; and in a word, for I am now launched quite beside my design, I say, in a word, were not its distance inconceivably great from Muscovy, and was not the Muscovite empire almost as rude, impotent, and ill-governed a crowd of slaves as they, the Czar of Muscovy might, with much ease, drive them all out of their country, and conquer them in one campaign ; and had the Czar, who I since hear is a growing prince, and begins to appear formidable in the world, fallen this way instead of attacking the warlike Swedes, in which attempt none of the powers of Europe would have envied or interrupted him, he might, by this time, have been Emperor of China, instead of being beaten by the King of Sweden at Narva, when the latter was not six to one in number."—Robinson Crusoe, Part II., Vol. II., pp. 254-55 (Dent, 1895).
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