﻿366 THE SEVENTH DISCOURSE : 



markand : such too is the diversity of soil in its fifteen 

 provinces, that, while some of them are exquisitely 

 fertile, richly cultivated, and extremely populous, 

 others are barren and rocky, dry and unfruitful, with 

 plains as wild or mountains as rugged as any in Scythia, 

 and those either wholly deserted, or peopled by savage 

 hordes, who, if they be not still independent, have 

 been very lately subdued by the perfidy, ra:her than 

 the valour, of a monarch, who has perpetuated his 

 own breach of faith in a Chinese poem, of which I 

 have seen a translation. 



The word China, concerning which I shall offer 

 some new remarks, is well known to the people whom 

 we call the Chinese ; but they never apply it (I speak 

 of the learned among them) to themselves or to their 

 country. Themselves, according to Father Visdelou> 

 they describe as the people of Hun, or of some other 

 illustrious family, by the memory of whose actions 

 they flatter their national pride ; and their country 

 they call Chum- cue, ox the Central Kingdom, represent- 

 ing it in their symbolical characters by a parallelogram 

 exactly bissected. At other times they distinguish it 

 by the words Tien- hi a, or What is under Heaven ; 

 meaning all that is valuable on earth. Since they 

 never name themselves with moderation, they would 

 have no right to complain, if they knew that Euro- 

 pean authors have ever spoken of them in the extreme* 

 of applause or of censure. By some they have been 

 extolled as the oldest and the wisest, as the most learned 

 and most ingenious of nations ; whilst others have 

 derided their pretensions to antiquity, condemned their 

 government asabominable, and arraigned theirmanners 

 as inhuman, without allowing them an element of sci- 

 ence, or a single art for which they have not been in- 

 debted to some more ancient and more civilized race of 

 men. The truth perhaps lies, where we usually find it, 



