Chu Hsi , “the prince of literature,” described the main object of Taoism to be “the preservation of the breath of life;” and Liu Mi , probably of our thirteenth century, 28 in his Dispassionate Comparison of the Three Religions , declared that “its chief achievement is the prolongation of longevity.” Such is the account of Taoism originality given by Confucian and Buddhist writers, but our authorities, Lao and Chuang , hardly bear out this representation of it as true of their time. There are chapters of the Tao Te Ching which presuppose a peculiar management of the breath, but the treatise is singularly free from anything to justify what Mr. Balfour well calls “the antics of