ACCOUNT OF BOOKS. 
ric ; the style of rhetoric ; action or 
pronunciation; characters of those 
who have excelled in the rhetorical 
art; the oratory of Demosthenes, 
containing observations on his mat- 
ter and style. 
Treating of melody and rhythm, 
a singular notion is advanced, that 
singing is more natural to man than 
speech ; and that, therefore, men 
sung before they spoke. In con- 
firmation of this opinion it is ob- 
served, that language came from the 
south and the east ; the inhabitants 
of which countries are more musi- 
cal than those of the north and 
west. 
“ History informs every man who 
studies it in the grand and compre- 
hensive view of the history of the 
species, that language and the race 
of men come from the south and 
east. Now, the people there are 
much more musical than in the north 
and west, where they appear to 
have almost quite lost those musical 
talents which they brought with 
them from the south and east ; and 
the farther north they have gone, 
the more they have lost of those 
talents; so that, as Lemmius, the 
Danish missionary among the Lap- 
landers, informs us, these people, 
though undoubtedly they came 
from a country far to the east, 
could hardly be taught the common 
church-tunes. But there is a 
southern and eastern nation, with 
which we are pretty well acquaint- 
ed, I mean the Chinese, who retain 
the musical genius of their country 
so much, that they have a far 
greater variety of musical accents 
upon their syllables than the 
Greeks had ; for the same mono- 
syllable among them, by being dif- 
ferently accented, signifies nine or 
ten different things; so that their 
AQgl 
Janguage, consisting of no more 
than three hundred and_ thirty 
words, serves all the purposes of a 
highly civilized life. Mr, Bevin, 
the gentleman whom I haye men- 
tioned in my fifth volume, was so 
obliging as to let me hear him 
speak some Chinese; and, as far as 
I could observe, their tones did not. 
rise so high as the acute accent 
of the Greeks; but the notes are 
very much divided, and the in- 
tervals very small, so that the mu- 
sic of their language resembles in 
that respect, the singing of birds. 
Whether they did not vary their 
monosyllables, by pronouncing 
them longer or shorter, I forgot to 
ask him; but I think it certain, 
that as rhythm is an essential part 
of music, they could not have had 
so much music in their language 
without rhythm; and I am per- 
suaded that they distinguish in that 
way the sense of several of their 
monosyllables, as we know the 
Greeks distinguished some of their 
words by the length or shortness of 
the syllables. 
«* Of the Chinese language I have 
spoken in page 108 of this volume ; 
and I will only had here, that it is 
the greatest phenomenon of the 
language kind that is to be found 
on this earth; for it is a language 
without any of the three arts of de- 
rivation, composition, and flection ; 
without one or other, or all of 
which, I should have thought it 
impossible to have formed a lan- 
guage which could serve the pur- 
poses of a life of civility and arts, 
such as that of the Chinese, It is, 
as I have observed in the passage 
above quoted, in that infantine 
state of articulation, when men had 
only learned to articulate single 
syllables, but not to put them tope- 
ther 
