CHINA. 417 



The marked feature which renders Chinese and Japanese 

 towns and interiors different from all others, and strikingly 

 peculiar, is due to the vertical method of writing employed. 

 All the flags, all the sign-posts, posters, and shop-signs, and all 

 the tents decorating the walls of the interiors, all the streaks of 

 bright colour in the various views, are drawn out into length 

 vertically, to accommodate the characters, instead of horizon- 

 tally, as with us. 



We are apt to regard the Chinese method of writing as 

 utterly different from our own, because the characters express 

 ideas and not sounds ; but in the use of the Arabic numerals in 

 all European languages, there is an exact parallel to the Chinese 

 method. The numerals 1, 2, 3, represent ideas of numbers, and 

 though a Frenchman, German, and Englishman alike understand 

 them when written, when reading them aloud they use different 

 sounds as equivalents, and would not understand one another 

 unless specially instructed. 



So it is exactly in the case of Chinese characters, only the 

 system is extended to all ideas, and not confined to numerals. 

 Even in having been derived originally from graphic represen- 

 tations of the numbers themselves, some at least of our numerals, 

 and all the Eoman numerals, correspond with Chinese characters. 



Though English words are expressed by series of letters strictly 

 representing sounds, yet, nevertheless, when the resulting words 

 are taken as a whole, they are read very differently by the little 

 educated in the various dialects. So much so, that a book read 

 aloud in broad Scotch, would be little understood by an uneducated 

 Englishman at least. Just in the same manner, educated China- 

 men, speaking only different dialects, can each read a Chinese 

 book to themselves, with perfect understanding ; but neither can 

 comprehend it if it be read aloud to him by the other. 



A Chinese book is very interesting in its construction. The 

 back of the book has its edges cut, instead of the front as with 

 us, and the front is left doubled in the condition in which we 

 leave the backs of books. The numbering of the pages and the 

 title of the Chinese book are placed on the front edge of each 

 leaf, where the paper is doubled, so that half of each character is 

 upon one side of the edge, and half on the other ; and the folded 



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