A Chinese Cycle
A Chinese scholar has pointed out that when Tennyson wrote “Locksley Hall” he could not have been aware of the exact nature of a Chinese cycle. “Better,” he exclaimed, “fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” It being granted that Cathay is poetical English for China, it was stated, with the complete concurrence of an eminent mandarin who was present, that a Chinese cycle consists, and has for some centuries consisted, of sixty years. By these cycles the lapse of time has been computed in China during the whole of the present dynasty. The poet, therefore, was less complimentary to Europe than he probably intended to be when he said that fifty years of Europe was only equal to sixty years of China.