MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. ■>li 



sumed extent of this practice has been brought as an argument against the 

 prevalence of parental feeling in China ; but we believe that the amount of 

 it has, by most writers, been overrated. No doubt but, in occasional in- 

 stances of female births, infanticide does exist ; but these cases certainly 

 occur only in the chief cities, and the most crowded population, where the 

 difficulty of subsistence takes away all hope from the poorest persons of being 

 able to rear their offspring. The Chinese are in general peculiarly fond of 

 their children, and the attachment seems to be mutual. The instances at 

 Canton (a very crowded and populous place) of the bodies of infants being 

 seen floating are not frequent, and may reasonably, in some cases, be attri- 

 buted to accident, where such multitudes are brought up from their birth in 

 small boats. There never was a more absurd blunder than to charge to in- 

 fanticide those instances in which the infants are found floating with a hollow 

 gourd about their persons, as if the gourd were a part of the system of expo- 

 sure ! Why, the very object of attaching these gourds to the children living 

 in boats is to save them from the risk of being drowned, and to float them 

 until they can be pulled out of the water. That children should sometimes 

 be found drowned, in spite of this precaution, is possible enough ; but to 

 consider the gourds as part and parcel of their fate is about as reasonable 

 and correct as if somebody should attribute all the deaths in England, from 

 drowning, to the exertions of the Humane Society. 



" The Roman Catholic fathers, with all their complete and intimate know- 

 ledge of China, had a trick of giving their own colouring to such matters as 

 bore in any way upon the honour and glory of the mission. We have seen 

 that they dealt now and then in miracles : the mere over-statement, therefore, 

 of the practice of infanticide was natural enough, when connected with the 

 object ; and Du Halde gives a pompous account of the fruits of the mission- 

 ary exertions. The merit, however, was peculiar, and of an equivocal kind ; 

 for, instead of attempting on most occasions to save the lives of the children 

 doomed to be drowned, they or their proselytes walked about to the houses, 

 baptizing the new-born infants previous to death — a cheap, rapid, and easy 

 work of charity." 



The second volume, which contains twelve chapters, embraces a vast variety 

 of subjects. Three chapters are devoted to the religions of Confucius, Budha, 

 and Taou ; the remainder to literature, science, natural history, and com- 

 merce. The limits allotted to the notice of recent publications will not per- 

 mit us to follow him through all his meanderings- Suffice it to say that we 

 highly approve of the work. 



We are sorry that Mr. Davis has adopted a different orthography to express 

 the sound of Chinese characters from that adopted by Dr. Morrison. The evil of 

 having no fixed standard of orthography is apparent among our French friends 

 and other continental nations, where the sound is not accompanied by the 

 character ; as it is almost impossible, even by a tolerably good scholar, to 

 know what they are writing about. We do not take on ourselves to defend 

 the Doctor's system of orthography ; but it seems a pity that because Chinese 

 teachers differ from each other, according to their locality (though speaking 

 the Mandarin tongue), pronouncing some characters longer or shorter, all 

 tiie variety of sounds thus occasioned should be propagated, in publishing 

 f^nglish works, to the bewilderment of the young student, who must seek in 

 vain for such sounds in the only work of any use to him in acquiring the lan- 

 guage. Mr. Davis for She-king writes Shy-king, for Le-king Ly-king, 

 for Che-hwang-te Chyhoang-ty, for Kwo-fung kui!-foong. for Heen, Hien, 

 &c. &c. An evil of this kind was obsei-vable in the pamphlets lately published 

 respecting China. One of the writers for the word Man, generally rendered 

 Barbarian, but which should have been translated southern people, spelt it 

 Mwan; the consequence was the other writer, a Chinese scholar too, did 

 not know where to look for the character in Dr. Morrison's Dictionary, the 

 latter sound not occurring in that work. As Mr. Davis received his first 

 lessons in the language from the Doctor, it appears rather uncourteous. 

 M. M,^No. 6. 2 I 



