183 



CHINA CHINA-WARE. 



The writing of the Chinese, indeed, if we consider 

 only the number of their characters, and compare it 

 with that of their words, would seem to possess a very 

 great superiority. There are not less than 80,000 

 Chinese characters; but of these only 10,000 are in 

 common use, and the knowledge of them is sufficient 

 to enable one to understand almost every Chinese 

 book. It was once thought that it required a man's 

 whole life to learn to read and write Chinese ; but 

 M. Remusat, the celebrated professor of that lan- 

 guage in the royal college at Paris, has demonstrated 

 by tacts, that the Chinese may be learned in as short 

 a time as any other idiom. The great number of 

 these characters proceeds, in the first place, from the 

 considerable quantity of homophonous words which 

 rxi-t in the Chinese. These are represented by dif- 

 ferent characters, as with us by different modes of 

 spelling, of which the French words cent, cent, sang, 

 tans, sens, 'tent, each having a different meaning, but 

 all pronounced alike , are a striking example. Neither 

 are homophonous words wanting in English, as bow 

 and bough, great and grate, and many others. The 

 Chinese characters, also, by being combined together, 

 as it were, into one, express two or more words at 

 the same time, and this, in a great degree, accounts 

 for there being so many of them. The Chinese cha- 

 racters are all reducible to 214, which are called keys 

 or radicals (in Chinese, poo), each of them represent- 

 ing one word, and each word an idea. By the analogy 

 of those ideas the complex characters are formed 

 an ingenious contrivance, which facilitates very much 

 the acquisition of the knowledge of them. Thus all 

 the words which express some manual labour or occu- 

 pation are combined of the cliaracter which represents 

 the word hand, with some other, expressive of the 

 particular occupation intended to be designated, or of 

 the material employed. This has induced many of 

 the learned, and even the Chinese literati themselves, 

 to maintain that the Chinese writing is ideographic, 

 and represents ideas in a manner unconnected with 

 the spoken language ; but this supposition is dis- 

 proved by the feet that no two Chinese can read 

 aloud from the same book without using the same 

 words, which are precisely those which the characters 

 represent. If it were otherwise, every person in 

 reading would use different words, and the written 

 language, as it is called, would be translated, not 

 read. It must be added, also, that the Chinese poetry 

 is in rhyme, and therefore addressed to the ear, and 

 not to the eye. This shows that it is impossible for 

 those who are ignorant of the Chinese language to 

 read the Chinese writing, unless their own idiom 

 should be constructed exactly on the same model 

 with the Chinese, have the same number of words, 

 with the same meaning affixed to each, and the same 

 grammatical forms. It has been repeatedly asserted 

 that the Coreans, and other nations in the neighbour- 

 hood of China, can all read the Chinese writing, and 

 understand it, without knowing a word of the spoken 

 language ; but this appears impossible. It is more 

 reasonable to suppose, either that they have adapted 

 the Chinese characters to their own idioms, or that 

 the Chinese is among them, as Latin is with us, a 

 learned language, which is generally acquired as a 

 part of a liberal system of education. The Chinese 

 characters are written from top to bottom, and from 

 right to left. The lines are not horizontal, but per- 

 pendicular, and parallel to each other. The Chinese 

 literature is rich in works of every description, both 

 in verse and in prose. They are fond of works of 

 moral philosophy, but they have a great many books 

 of history, geography, voyages, dramas, romances, 

 tales, and fictions of all kinds. Several of the latter 

 works have been lately translated in England and 

 France. The books called the Kings, ascribed to 



their great sage Confucius, are now in a course of 

 translation. The works of his successor, Meng-Tseu, 

 have been lately published at Paris in the original, 

 with an elegant Latin translation, in two octavo vo- 

 lumes, by M. Stanislas Julien. Other translations 

 from the Chinese are in progress, both at London ami 

 Paris, under the patronage of the Asiatic societies of 

 those capitals. The king of France has established 

 a professorship of Chinese in the royal college at Pa- 

 ris. This chair is now filled by the learned Remusat, 

 who has already formed several distinguished pupils. 

 The study of the Chinese language appears to be 

 now pursued with great ardour in Europe, and with 

 remarkable success. The reverend Mr Morrison haa 

 published a Chinese grammar, and a dictionary of the 

 same language, in 4 vols. 4to ; the former printed at 

 Serampore. the latter at Macao, and both difficult to 

 be procured. M. Rejnusat has published at Paris an 

 excellent grammar of that language. The manu- 

 script dictionary of father Basil de Glemona was trans- 

 lated into French, and published at Paris, by M. de 

 Guignes, under the patronage of the emperor Na- 

 poleon, in the year 1813, in one thick folio volume, 

 to wliich a valuable supplement has been since added 

 by M. Klaproth. Auxiliary means are not now want- 

 ing for those who are desirous of learning this curi- 

 ous idiom. 



CHINA-WARE* the finest and most beautiful 

 of all the kinds of earthen-ware, and so called 

 from China being the country which first supplied 

 this material to the Dutch and English merchants. 

 It is likewise called Porcelain, as some suppose, 

 from the Portuguese porcellana, a cup or vessel ; but 

 Dr Whittaker suggests, that the name may have arisen 

 from the tint of the early specimens brought to Europe, 

 resembling the flower of the Purslain, a light pink. 



China-ware, when broken, presents a granular 

 surface, with a texture compact, dense, firm, liard, 

 vitreous, and durable ; semi-transparent, with a cov- 

 ering of white glass, clear, smooth, unaffected by 

 all acids, excepting the fluoric, and sustaining unin- 

 jured a sudden rise of temperature. In the proper- 

 ties of being semi-transparent and semi-vitrified, but 

 in scarcely any of the preparatory processes and 

 manipulations, is china-ware distinguished from good 

 earthen-ware. Various articles for the use of the 

 table and the toilet, are usually formed of china-ware, 

 as also chemical utensils, retorts, alembics, crucibles, 

 dishes, and many other articles indispensable in the 

 laboratory. 



Progress of the Manufacture. The manufacture 

 of porcelain by Europeans, did not commence till the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century, although the 

 knowledge of its value existed prior to the Christian 

 era ; for we find that Pompey's soldiers carried some 

 from Pontus to Rome, B.C. 64. The existence 

 of the manufacture of clay into vessels, in Bri- 

 tain, long prior to that date, is proved by the dis- 

 covery of earthen-ware vessels, certainly not choice 

 specimens of workmanship or taste, but adapted for 

 purposes of domestic utility ; and, if we allow any 

 weight to the circumstance of different excavations in 

 several pottery towns in Staffordshire, indicating a 

 long abstraction of their contents for purposes of 

 the manufacture, and also regard the fact that one of 

 those towns has a name which plainly determines the 

 practice of the art Burslem-Bwlyeardslyme, the plot 

 of ground where is quarried the clay for bowls ; and 

 that the Tygel-wyrthan, the workers of tygs, drink 

 ing vessels or cups, (not the makers of tiles, of which 

 very few then were needed) were residents in the dis- 



* This article has been written expressly for the present 

 work, and contains an account of the latent improvements 

 in the manufacture of china-ware. 



