169 



cording events, opinions, and laws,, as would spur the 

 human mind to the exertions requisite to this great dis-» 

 covery. Mankind must have been in possession of Pieture- 

 writing, Ilieroglyphies, or that improvement upon them 

 which exists at present among the Chinese, and these were 

 sufticient for all their purposes. They arc, it is true, greatly 

 inferior to the alphabetic mode of writing; but as the former 

 could never improve into the latter — as the}'^ are each per- 

 fectly distinct and unconnected in their kinds — as one repre- 

 sents things and ideas, and the other neither things nor ideas 

 in the first instance, but sounds, how could the former mode 

 be abandoned, and the latter adopted, when the one though 

 inconvenient seemed fitted to all the wants of the writer; 

 and the other was not only untried, but was even of such a 

 nature, as that no sagacity could conjecture its utility untii 

 subjected to reiterated trial ? 



It has been ascertained that the nations bordering on 

 China, and which speak a different language, can read and 

 understand the Chinese when written, though they cannot 

 comprehend a word of it when spoken;* and in perusing 

 a Chinese work, it is their own language they pronounce, 

 and not that of China : and this because the characters re- 

 present things and ideas — not sounds. We should there- 

 fore be inclined to suppose that two natives of China might 



z2 



* Staunton's Account of the Embassy to China.— Vol, 3. p. 420. 2d. edit. 



