CHINA. 



American Indians; the same obliquity of UM eye* and eyebrows, 

 turned upwanli at the outer extremities, and a corresponding thinneai 

 and tufty growth of beard. The China* too are distinguished by a 

 nearly total absence of hair from the *urfac of the body. In the 

 smallness of the handi and feet, and of the bone* of the body, com- 

 pared with Europeans, they resemble the generality of Asiatic*. The 

 features of the people in the South have perhaps IMS of the harsh 

 angularity of the Tartar countenance than at Peking. Among those 

 who are not exposed to the climate the complexion is fully as fair as 

 that of the Portuguese ; but the sun has a powerful effect on their 

 skins. Up to the age of twenty, or a little more, they are often very 

 good looking ; but soon after that time the prominent cheek-bones 

 generally give a harshness to the features as the roundness of youth 

 wean off. With the progress of age the old men in most cases become 

 Terr ugly, and the old women, if possible, still more so. 



The moral character of the Chinese people U a compound of bad 

 and good traits, which, as usual, may be traced to the influence of 

 their political and social system. Industry, tranquillity, and content 

 are unusually prevalent in the bulk of the population. Notwithstanding 

 hi* power U absolute, the emperor himself always endeavours to 

 prore that his conduct is based in reason and benevolence, the truth 

 of the argument being of course a distinct affair. The advantageous 

 features of their character, as mildness, docility, industry, peace- 

 ableness, subordination, and respect for the aged, are accompanied by 

 the rices of insincerity and falsehood, with their consequences, mutual 

 ilixtrust and jealousy. Lying and deceit, being generally the refuge 

 of the weak and timid, have always been held among us as disgraceful 

 vices, while the Chinese, at any time, do not attach the same degree 

 of disgrace to deceit, and least of all when it is practised towards a 

 European. It would however be as unreasonable to infer the character 

 of the whole nation from the unfavourable aspect in which it appears 

 at Canton, a trading sea-port, as to form an estimate of our national 

 character in England from an experience equally limited and disad- 

 vantageous. 



Arti, d-c. Whatever may be the actual antiquity of the Chinese 

 people, no doubt seems now to exist of their having been the authors 

 of what are justly considered in Europe as three of the most import- 

 ant inventions or discoveries of modern times : the art of printing, 

 the composition of gunpowder, and the magnetic compass. To these 

 may be added two very remarkable manufactures, of which they 

 were unquestionably the first inventors, those of silk and of porcelain. 

 There cannot be the least doubt of the art of printing having been 

 practised in China during the 10th century of our era. The precise 

 mode in which they operate U certainly different from ours, but the 

 main principle, that of multiplying and cheapening books, by saving 

 the time and labour of transcription, is altogether the same. The 

 invention of powder, as compounded of 'sulphur, saltpetre, and 

 willow-charcoal,' is carried back by the Chinese to a very remote date ; 

 but its particular application to fire-arms seems to have been European. 

 The Chinese name has no reference whatever to guns, and simply 

 implies ' fire-drug,' which seems to show that the composition was 

 applied by them merely to fire-works (in which they excel at present) 

 and other harmless or useful purposes, long before their unwarlike 

 spirit could have suggested the use of guns to themselves, or they 

 could have borrowed the notion from Europe. With regard to the 

 compass, the attractive power of the loadstone had been known to 

 them from remote antiquity, but its property of communicating 

 polarity to iron is for the first time explicitly noticed in a Chinese 

 dictionary finished in A.D. 121. Under the head of ' Loadstone' 

 appears this definition : "A stone with which a direction can be given 

 to the needle." The same word (chin) is used by them to express 

 the magnetic and the common working needle, as among ourselves. 

 Pere Oaubil, in his ' History of the Tang Dynasty,' states that he 

 found, in a work written one hundred years later than the above, the 

 use of the compasi distinctly recorded. It is curious to contrast 

 inventions of such high utility and importance with the very small 

 progress which the Chinese have made in the sciences, as astronomy, 

 geography, and mathematics, for which they were not ashamed to be 

 indebted to the European missionaries. With regard to the fine arts, 

 or those which minister rather to the pleasures than to the wants of 

 mankind, it become* necessary to make some allowances for the 

 peculiarities of national taste. The arts of drawing and painting do 

 not rank so high among the Chinese as among ourselves in Europe, 

 and having therefore met with less encouragement they may be 

 expected to have made less progress. In drawings where perspective 

 k not very strictly required, as in representations of birds, insects, 

 fruits, and flowers, they are eminently successful, and nothing can 

 exceed the splendour and variety of their colours. In regard to the 

 Chinese music, their instruments are mostly tuned in unison, and 

 they have little or no idea of accompaniment. They have certain 

 characters to express the name of every note in their very limited 

 scale, and these they use in writing down their airs. Their instru- 

 ment* are numerous, consisting of different species of lute* and 

 guitars; flute* and other wind-instruments; a harmonicou of 

 wires, touched with two slender slips of bamboo ; bells and pieces of 

 sonorous metal ; drums, and a sort of clarionet which emits as nearly 

 as possible the tones of the Scottish bagpipe. 



Liitralurt and Lcmffuage.Tb antiquity of Chinese literature is 



CHINA. 4 



proportionate to that of their language, and has been of course greatly 

 promoted and increased by the early invention of the art of printing, 

 which they have now possessed for (KM) year*. Specimens of this 

 literature in various department* have been afforded to Europe by 

 the labours of Stauuton, Davis, Morrison, Klaproth, and rUmunat, 

 who followed up the earlier investigations of the J emits at Peking, 

 and have enabled us to form a judgment regarding the merits of com- 

 positions which for a long period were considered to be inaccessible, 

 from the difficulties of the language in which they were written. In 

 legislation we pose ** a translation of the penal code of the empire ; 

 in politics and morals, the sacred books of Confucius and his followers ; 

 and in philology and belles-lettres we have a copious and well-executed 

 dictionary of the language ; several translations or abstracts of his- 

 tories ; the dramas of the ' Heir in Old Ago,' the ' Sorrow* of Han,' 

 Le Cercle de Craie ; ' an elaborate treatise concerning their poetry ; 

 and the excellent novel or romance of the ' Fortunate Union.' The 

 mastery which ha* thus been obtained of the language of China by 

 several Europeans, among whom our own countrymen hold a con- 

 spicuous place, seems to prove that the rumoured difficulties attendant 

 ad its acquisition, from the alleged number and variety of the charac- 

 ters, are the mere exaggeration* of ignorance. We may close this 

 notice with giving some account of so singular and original a language 

 from Davis's work on China. 



It appears that the theory of a universal medium for the communi- 

 cation of ideas, as conceived by Bishop Wilkins, has been realised by 

 the Chinese. While the letter* of our alphabet are mere symbol* of 

 sounds, the Chinese characters or written words are symbols of ideas, 

 and alike intelligible to the people of Cochin China, Japan, Loo-Choo, 

 and Corea, with those of China itself ; in the same way as the Arabic 

 numerals are common to all Europe, while the sounds which they 

 represent in one country would convey no meaning to the inhabitants 

 of any other. It is in this manner too that the universality of the 

 Chinese language extends only to the written character, and that the 

 native* of the two extremities of the empire, who read the same 

 books, and understand each other perfectly on paper, are all but 

 mutually unintelligible in speech. The roots, or original characters 

 of the Chinese, are only 214 in number, and might indeed be reduced 

 to a much smaller amount by a little dissection and analysis. These 

 are combined with each other to form other words, or express other 

 ideas, very much in the same way that the individual Arabic nume- 

 rals are combined to express the infinite varieties of numbers. By a 

 species of analogy they may be called the alphabet of the language ; 

 with the difference that exists between an alphabet of ideas and an 

 alphabet of sounds. These roots serve, like our alphabet, for the 

 arrangement of the words in the large Chinese dictionary, a national 

 work compiled by the most learned persons in the empire more than 

 a century since, by order of the enlightened monarch K&ng-hy. Much 

 consideration is attached by the Chinese to the graphic beauty of 

 their written characters. The two most usual forms of their charac- 

 ters are the printed and the written, besides which there are the seal, 

 or engraved form, and one or two others. The printed form (analo- 

 gous to our Human type) lays claim only to clearness and accuracy ; 

 but the written combines correctness with elegance. It may suffice 

 to observe generally, that the grammar of the language is extremely 

 limited. In the absence of all inflexion, of which their characters are 

 utterly incapable, the relation of words to each other in a sentence 

 can ouly be marked by their position. The verb, for instance, must 

 always precede it* object, and follow its agent The case* of nouns 

 and pronouns are determined by prepositions, as teooug t'hien, ' from 

 heaven.' The collocation of words in a sentence must of course be a 

 matter of more consequence in Chinese than in those languages where 

 the relntions of different words to each other are marked by the dis- 

 tinctions of number, gender, cane, and person, as shown by declension 

 and conjugation. The ' Xotitia Lingua: Sinicee ' of tho Jesuit Preinare 

 is perhaps the but Chinese grammar ever written. Mr. Headows's 

 ' Desultory Notes on China ' should also be consulted by the student. 



Commerce, I4anfacturu, <tc. The character of the productions 

 and trade of China has been noticed in our account of the several 

 provinces; the foreign trade generally is noticed under CANTON, and 

 will be further noticed under SH ANU-IIAI; and the English trade under 

 MONO. Koxo. The principal article of export is tea, with which 

 China supplies almost every part of the world. The total quantity 

 annually exported now considerably exceeds, a* already mentioned, 

 100 million* of pounds. Of this the quantity brought into Great 

 Britain in 1868, was 70,735,582 Iba. ; and about 10 millions of pound* 

 went to the British colonies and East Indian presidencies. In the 

 same year above 20 millions of pound* were exported to the United 

 States ; 7 millions to Russia, and 8 or 4 million* to all other countries. 

 Raw silk-thread and silk piece-goods are the next most important 

 article* of export. About 20,000 bale* of raw silk are annually 

 exported to England. The value of the silk-ware exported is about 

 one-fourth that of the tea. Nankeens are exported somewhat largely to 

 India. Sugar, sugar-candy, cassia, fancy-lackered goods, articles made 

 in ivory, mother-of-pearl, tortoise-shell 4c., are also among the 

 exports. The treasure exported is considerably more in amount than 

 the value of the tea exported. 



The imports of manufactured article* are comparatively small. 

 Cotton and woollen goods, hardware, clock*, 4o., are among the 



