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""""344 CHINA MISSION YEAR BOOK.read anything more vulgar ; and, moreover, it is theone language common to educated Chinese whereverfound, as well as being the classical language of Japanand Korea. Thus it affords many facilities to the missionary journalist.On the other hand, it is not understood by the bulkof our intelligent church members, even those who canreadily read what is written more closely to the actuallanguage they speak. Their spoken language, exceptin the southwestern and southern provinces, is themandarin dialect." In the southwestern and southernprovinces several more ancient dialects are spoken ;themost widespread of which is Cantonese. Were "mandarin" the language of the whole Empire, all churchperiodicals would be in "mandarin" (with perhaps alittle "easy wen-li" here and there), but as there arethese differing dialects, the periodicals for missionmembers are, as a fact, variously in easy wen-li, inmandarin, or (as one of them) in romanised colloquial.Up till 1890, however, all the Christian periodicals ofChina were in literary or else easy wen-li.The first Christian newspaper in the Chinese language was started by Drs. Morrison and Milne at Malaccain 1815. The next essay of Christian journalism wasthat of Dr. Y. J. Allen, who published the ChurchNews and Globe Magazine at Shanghai in 1868. Then,from this distinctively religious paper, he branchedforth into a more general style, changing his paperinto the Wan Kuo Kung Pao, or Review of the Times,"which became the chief literary link between missionaries and mandarins and the scholarly Chinese in general until Dr. Allen s death at the end of 1907.During that year this "Review" was 112 pages inbulk, 20 cents in price, with a circulation of 1,850 copiesmonthly, but many more readers than that number, asmost of the copies were lent around a little readingcircle. The one item in its contents, which was by thattime virtually superseded, was its monthly summary of