﻿36 THE FIFTH DISCOURSE*. 



themselves ; but it is possible too, that they were car- 

 ried from Rome or from China, whence occasional 

 embassies were sent to the kings of Eighur. Towards 

 the end of the tenth century the Chinese emperor dis- 

 patched an ambassador to a prince, named Erslan, 

 which, in the Turkish of Constantinople, signifies a 

 lion, who resided near the Golden Mountain ; in the 

 same station, perhaps, where the Romans had been re- 

 ceived in the middle of the sixth century. The Chinese 

 on his return home reported the Eighuris to be a grave 

 people, with fair complexions, diligent workmen, and 

 ingenious artificers not only in gold, silver, and iron, 

 but in jasper and fine stones ; and the Remans had be- 

 fore described their magnificent reception in a rich 

 palace adorned with Chinese manufactures : but these, 

 times were comparatively modern 5 and, even if we 

 should admit that the Eighuris, who are said to have 

 been governed for a period of two thousand years by 

 an Idecut, or sovereign, of their own race, were in 

 some very early age a literary and polished nation, it 

 would prove nothing in favour of the Huns, Turcs, 

 Mongals, and other savages to the north of Pekin, who 

 seem in all ages before Muhammed , to have been 

 equally ferocious and illiterate. 



Without actual inspection of the manuscripts that 

 have been found near the Caspian, it would be im- 

 posible ro give a correct opinion concerning them ; 

 but one of them, described as written on blue silky 

 paper in letters of gold and silver, not unlike Hebrew, 

 was probably a Tibetian composition of the same kind 

 with that which lay near the source of the Irtish, and 

 of which Cassiano, I believe, made the first accurate 

 version. Another, if we mayjudge from the description 

 of it, vyas probably modern Turkish', and none of 

 them could have been of great antiquity. 



IV. From ancient monuments, therefore, we have 



