The Dutch gentlemen, equally disgusted with the meanness and filthiness of the place, and with the pride and haughtiness of the people, became now reconciled to the shabby appearance of their old travelling dresses, which they began to consider as fully good enough for the occasion.

Having finished their elegant repast, the amusements of the day commenced on the ice. The Emperor made his appearance in a sort of sledge, supported by the figures of four dragons. This machine was moved about by several great Mandarins, some dragging before, and others pushing behind. The four principal ministers of state were also drawn upon the ice in their sledges by inferior mandarins. Whole troops of civil and military officers soon appeared, some on sledges, some on skaits, and others playing at football upon the ice, and he that picked up the ball was rewarded by the Emperor. The ball was then hung up in a kind of arch, and several mandarins shot at it, in passing on skaits, with their bows and arrows. Their skaits were cut off short under the heel, and the forepart was turned up at right angles. Owing to this form, or to the inexpertness of the skaiters, they could not stop themselves on a sudden, but always tumbled one over the other whenever they came near the edge of the ice, or towards the quarter where the Emperor happened to be.

Leaving this place, they were carried through several narrow streets, composed of miserable houses, forming a surprising contrast with the proud walls of the palace. They were conducted into a small room of one of these houses, almost void of furniture, in order to pay their compliments to Ho-tchung-tang, the Collao, or prime minister, whom they found sitting cross-legged on a truckle bedstead with cane bottom. Before this creature of fortune, whose fate I shall have occasion hereafter to notice, they were obliged to go down on their knees. Like a true prime minister of China, he waved all conversation that might lead towards business, talked to them of the length of their journey, was astonished how they bore the cold weather in such scanty clothing, and such like general topics, which, in fact, signified nothing. From the first minister they paid their visit to the second, whom they found lodged in a similar manner; after which they returned to their mean apartments in the city, more satisfied on a comparison with the miserable little chambers in which they had found the two first ministers of this far-famed empire lodged, and the mean hovels which they met with in the very center of the space shut in by the walls of the imperial palace. The impressions that the events and transactions of this day made on the minds of the visitors were those of utter astonishment, on finding every thing so very much the reverse of what they had been led to expect.

The following day they were again drawn to court in their little carts, before four o'clock in the morning, where, after having waited about five hours in empty rooms, similar to those of the preceding day, two or three great men (Ta-gin) called upon them, but behaved towards them in a distant, scornful, and haughty manner. "We had once more," observes the Dutch journalist, from which I quote, "an occasion to remark the surprising contrast of magnificence and meanness in the buildings, and of pride and littleness in the persons belonging to the imperial palace."

After these interviews, they were suffered to remain a day or two at home; but on a bag of dried grapes being brought by a mandarin from the Emperor, they were required to thank him for the present with nine prostrations, as usual. Another time a little pastry from the imperial kitchen demanded the same ceremony. In short, whether at home or in the palace, the Chinese were determined they should be kept in the constant practice of the koo-too, or ceremony of genuflexion and prostration.

On the 26th of January, the Embassadors received notice that it was expected they should attend the procession of the Emperor to the temple, where he was about to make an offering to the God of Heaven and of earth. Having waited accordingly by the road side, from three o'clock in the morning till six, the weather dismally cold, Fahrenheit's thermometer standing at 16 below the freezing point, the Emperor at length passed in his chair, when they made the usual prostrations and returned home.

The next morning they were again required to proceed to the same place, and at the same early hour, to witness his return and again to go through the usual ceremony.

On the 29th, they were again summoned to attend by the road side to do homage before the Emperor, as he passed them on his way to a pagoda or Poo-ta-la, a kind of temple or monastery, where a great number of priests, clothed in yellow, lived together in a state of celibacy; and here he made his burnt-offerings. The mystical rates performed, presents were brought out for the Embassador and suite, and also for the King of Holland, consisting of little purses, flimsey silks, and a coarse stuff somewhat similar to that known by seamen under the name of bunting; and, in token of gratitude for this mark of imperial kindness, they were directed again to bow down their heads to the ground.

On the 30th, it was announced to them that the Emperor intended to pay a visit to his palace at Yuen-min-yuen, and that it would be necessary for them to follow him thither; after having, as usual, paid their respects in the Chinese manner by the road side as he passed.

On the 31st, they were conducted round the grounds of Yuen-min-yuen by several Mandarins, and received great satisfaction in viewing the vast variety of buildings, and the good taste in which the gardens and pleasure grounds were laid out, and which wore an agreeable aspect, even in the depth of winter. In one of the buildings they saw the several presents deposited, which had been carried the preceding year by the Earl of Macartney. They were stowed away with no great care, among many other articles, in all probability never more to see the light of day. It seems the elegant carriages of Hatchett, that were finished with so much care and objects of admiration even in London, were here carelessly thrown behind one of their mean and clumsy carts, to which they pretended to bestow a preference. Capricious as children, the toy once played with must be thrown aside and changed for something new; or, in this instance, it would not be out of character to suppose, that the two vehicles had designedly been placed together to point out to Europeans of how little estimation the Chinese considered their articles of ostentation, when they could perform the same services by simpler and less expensive means.

The Dutch Embassadors and their suite were now to have a specimen of the court entertainments, and the polite amusements of this grand empire. They consisted chiefly of the contortions of the human body, practiced by posture-masters; of rope-dancing, and a sort of pantomimic performance, the principal characters of which were men dressed in skins, and going on all-fours, intended to represent wild beasts; and a parcel of boys habited in the dresses of mandarins, who were to hunt them. This extraordinary chace, and the music, and the rope-dancing, put the Emperor into such good humour, that he rewarded the performers very liberally. And the Empress and the ladies, who were in an upper part of the house concealed behind a sort of venetian blinds, appeared from their tittering noise to be highly entertained. The whole concluded, though in the middle of the day, with a variety of fire-works; and the Chinese part of the company departed seemingly well satisfied with these diversions.

An eclipse of the moon happening on the fourth of February gave occasion to the Embassadors to enjoy a little rest at home, though they were summoned to attend the palace at a very early hour in the morning. The Emperor and his mandarins were engaged the whole day in devoutly praying the gods that the moon might not be eaten up by the great dragon that was hovering about her. Recovered from their apprehensions, an entertainment was given the following day, at which the Embassadors were required to be present. After a number of juggling tricks and infantine sports, a pantomime, intended to be an exhibition of the battle of the dragon and the moon, was represented before the full court. In this engagement two or three hundred priests, bearing lanterns suspended at the ends of long sticks, performed a variety of evolutions, dancing and capering about, sometimes over the plain, and then over chairs and tables, affording to his Imperial Majesty and to his courtiers the greatest pleasure and satisfaction.

On the fifteenth of February the Dutch Embassadors left Pekin, having remained there thirty-six days, during which they were scarcely allowed to have a single day's rest, but were obliged, at the most unseasonable hours, in the depth of winter, when the thermometer was seldom higher than 10 or 12 degrees below the freezing point, to dance attendance upon the Emperor and the great officers of state, whenever they might think fit to call upon them; and to submit to the degrading ceremony of knocking the head nine times against the ground, at least on thirty different occasions, and without having the satisfaction of gaining by this unconditional compliance any one earthly thing, beyond a compliment from the Emperor, that they went through their prostrations to admiration! And they were finally obliged to leave the capital without being once allowed to speak on any kind of business, or even asked a single question as to the nature of their mission, which, indeed, the Chinese were determined to take for granted was purely complimentary to their great Emperor.

The manuscript I quote from describes minutely all the pantomimic performances, the tricks of conjurors and jugglers, and the feats of posture-masters, but as they seem to be pretty much of the same kind as were exhibited before the British Embassy in Tartary, as described by Lord Macartney, I forbear to relate them. Enough has been said to shew the taste of the court in this respect, and the state of the drama in China.

I suspect, however, that the amusements of the theatre have in some degree degenerated at court since the time of the Tartar conquest. Dancing, riding, wrestling, and posture-making, are more congenial to the rude and unpolished Tartar than the airs and dialogue of a regular drama, which is better suited to the genius and spirit of the ceremonious and effeminate Chinese. I am led to this observation from the very common custom among the Chinese officers of state of having private theatres in their houses, in which, instead of the juggling tricks above mentioned, they occasionally entertain their guests with regular dramatic performances. In the course of our journey through the country and at Canton, we were entertained with a number of exhibitions of this kind; and as "the purpose of playing," as our immortal bard has observed, "both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature," it may not be foreign to the present subject to take a brief notice of such performances.

The subjects of the pieces exhibited are for the most part historical, and relate generally to the transactions of remote periods, in which cases the dresses are conformable to the ancient costume of China. There are others, however, that represent the Tartar conquest, but none built on historical events subsequent to that period. But the ancient drama is preferred by the critics. They have also comic pieces, in which there is always a buffoon, whose grimaces and low jests, like those of the buffoons in our own theatres, obtain from the audience the greatest share of applause. The dialogue in all their dramas, whether serious or comic, is conducted in a kind of monotonous recitative, sometimes however rising or sinking a few tones, which are meant to be expressive of passionate or querulous cadences. The speaker is interrupted at intervals by shrill harsh music, generally of wind instruments, and the pauses are invariably filled up with a loud crash, aided by the sonorous and deafening gong, and sometimes by the kettle drum. An air or song generally follows. Joy, grief, rage, despair, madness, are all attempted to be expressed in song on the Chinese stage. I am not sure that a vehement admirer of the Italian opera might not take umbrage at the representation of a Chinese drama, as it appears to be something so very like a burlesque on that fashionable species of dramatic entertainment; nor is the Chinese stage wanting in those vocal warblers, the nature of whom, as we are told by the ingenious and very entertaining Martin Sherlock, a French lady explained to her little inquisitive daughter, by informing her, that there was the same difference between them and men, as between an ox and a bull. Such creatures are indeed more necessary to the Chinese theatre, as the manners of the country prohibit women from appearing in public.

The unity of action is so far preserved, that they have actually no change of scene; but change of place must frequently be supposed. To assist the imagination in this respect, their management is whimsical enough. If it be necessary to send a general on a distant expedition, he mounts a stick, takes two or three turns round the stage, brandishes a little whip, and sings a song; when this is ended, he stops short, and recommences his recitative, when the journey is supposed to be performed. The want of scenery is sometimes supplied by a very unclassical figure, which, just the reverse of the prosopopoeia or personification of grammarians, considers persons to represent things. If, for instance, a walled city is to be stormed, a parcel of soldiers, piling themselves on a heap across the stage, are supposed to represent the wall over which the storming party is to scramble. This puts one in mind of the shifts of Nick Bottom. "Some man or other must present wall," and, "let him have some plaister, or some lome, or some rough-cast about him to signify wall."

The audience is never left in doubt as to the character which is produced before it. Like the ancient Greek drama and, in imitation thereof, all our old plays, the dramatis person introduce themselves in appropriate speeches to the acquaintance of the spectators.

As to the time of action, a single drama will sometimes include the transactions of a whole century, or even of a dynasty more than twice the length of that period; which, among other absurdities, gave Voltaire occasion to compare what he thought to be a literal translation of the Orphan of the House of Tchao, "to those monstrous farces of Shakespear, which have been called tragedies;" farces, however, which will continue to be read by those who understand them, which he did not, with heartfelt emotion and delight, when his Orphan of China shall have sunk into the neglect even of his own admiring countrymen.

In this miserable composition of Father Prmare, for it can scarcely be called a translation, there is neither diction, nor sentiment, nor character; it is a mere tissue of unnatural, or at least very improbable events, fit only for the amusement of children, and not capable of raising one single passion, but that of contempt for the taste of those who could express an admiration of such a composition. The denouement of the piece is materially assisted by means of a dog: but this part of the story is told, and not exhibited; the Chinese taste not being quite so depraved, in this instance, as to admit the performance of a four-footed animal on the stage.

This drama, with ninety-nine others, published together in one work, are considered as the classical stock-pieces of the Chinese stage; but like ourselves, they complain that a depraved taste prevails for modern productions very inferior to those of ancient date. It is certainly true, that every sort of ribaldry and obscenity are encouraged on the Chinese stage at the present day. A set of players of a superior kind travel occasionally from Nankin to Canton; at the latter of which cities, it seems, they meet with considerable encouragement from the Hong merchants, and other wealthy inhabitants. At these exhibitions the English are sometimes present. The subject and the conduct of one of their stock pieces, which being a great favourite is frequently repeated, are so remarkable, that I cannot forbear taking some notice of it. A woman being tempted to murder her husband performs the act whilst he is asleep, by striking a small hatchet into his forehead. He appears on the stage with a large gash just above the eyes, out of which issues a prodigious effusion of blood, reels about for some time, bemoaning his lamentable fate in a song, till exhausted by loss of blood, he falls, and dies. The woman is seized, brought before a magistrate, and condemned to be flayed alive. The sentence is put in execution; and, in the following act, she appears upon the stage not only naked, but completely excoriated. The thin wrapper with which the creature (an eunuch) is covered, who sustains the part, is stretched so tight about the body, and so well painted, as to represent the disgusting object of a human being deprived of its skin; and in this condition the character sings or, more properly speaking, whines nearly half an hour on the stage, to excite the compassion of three infernal or malignant spirits who, like acus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, sit in judgment on her future destiny. I have been informed that it is scarcely possible to conceive a more obscene, indelicate, and disgusting object, than this favourite exhibition, which, if intended "to hold the mirror up to nature," it is to nature in its most gross, rude, and uncivilized state, ill-agreeing with the boasted morality, high polish, refined delicacy, and ceremonious exterior of the Chinese nation; but it tends, among other parts of their real conduct in life, to strengthen an observation I have already made with regard to their filial piety, and which, with few exceptions, may perhaps be extended to most of their civil and moral institutions, "that they exist more in state maxims, than in the minds of the people." As, however, a Chinese might be led to make similar reflexions on the exhibition of Harlequin Skeleton, and those numerous representations that of late years have crept upon our own stage, where ghosts, hobgoblins, and bleeding statues are called in aid of the spectacle, I should hesitate to draw any general conclusion, with regard to their taste, from the particular exhibition of a woman flayed alive, were they not in the constant practice of performing other pieces that, in point of immorality and obscenity, are still infinitely worse; so vulgarly indelicate and so filthy, that the European part of the audience is sometimes compelled by disgust to leave the theatre. These are such as will not bear description, nor do I know to what scenic representations they can with propriety be compared, unless to those gross indecencies of Theodora, which Procopius has described to have been exhibited on the Roman stage, in the reign of Justinian[11]. The people who encourage them must be sunk very deep in intellectual grossness, and have totally lost sight of all decency. These and similar scenes may be considered among the ill effects of excluding women from their due share of influence in society.

[11] See Gibbon, under Emperor Justinian; and Menagiana, in which is given the translation of a very extraordinary passage from Procopius.

It would be impossible to compliment the court of Pekin on the elegance and refinement of its entertainments, but at the expence of truth and reason. Those of Tartar origin will no more bear a comparison with the noble contests of strength and agility displayed by the old hardy Romans in the Circensian games, than the regular drama of the Chinese will admit of being measured by the softer, but more refined and rational amusements of a similar kind in Europe. It is true the scenic representations in the decline of the Roman empire, as they are described to us, appear to have been as rude and barbarous as those of the Chinese. They began by exhibiting in their vast amphitheatre the rare and wonderful productions of nature. Forests enlivened with innumerable birds; caverns pouring forth lions, and tygers, and panthers, and other beasts of prey; plains covered with the elephant, the rhinosceros, the zebra, the ostrich, and other curious animals, which the wilds of Africa furnished, were all brought together within the circuit of the arena. Not satisfied with the rich productions of the earth, the sea must also become tributary to their amusements. The arena was convertible into a sheet of water; and, at length, the two elements concluding a marriage, as on the Chinese theatre, produced a race of monsters which, according to the Latin poet's[12] description, might vie with those of China.

"Non solum nobus sylvestria cernere monstra Contigit, quoreos ego cum certantibus ursis Spectavi vitulos, et equorum nomine dignum Sed difforme genus."——

Where Sylvan monsters not alone appear, But sea-cows struggle with the shaggy bear, And horses of the deep, a shapeless race.——

[12] T. Calpurnius.

In short, the greater part of the amusements of the Chinese are, at the present day, of a nature so very puerile, or so gross and vulgar, that the tricks and the puppet-shews which are occasionally exhibited in a common fair of one of the country towns of England, may be considered as comparatively polished, interesting, and rational. In slight-of-hand, in posture-making, rope-dancing, riding, and athletic exercises, they are much inferior to Europeans; but in the variety of their fire-works they, perhaps, may carry the palm against the whole world. In every other respect the amusements of the capital of China appear to be of a low and trifling nature, neither suited to the affected gravity of the government nor to the generally supposed state of civilization among the people.

The old Emperor, as he observed to Lord Macartney, seldom partook of such amusements. Considering, indeed, all the circumstances connected with the reign of the present dynasty on the throne, the government of an empire of such vast magnitude, stored with an almost incalculable population, must necessarily be a task of inconceivable vigilance and toil; a task that must have required all the time, the talents, and the attention of the four sovereigns to ensure the brilliant and unparalleled successes that have distinguished their long reign. Tchien Lung, at the age of eighty-three, was so little afflicted with the infirmities of age, that he had all the appearance and activity of a hale man of sixty. His eye was dark, quick, and penetrating, his nose rather aquiline, and his complexion, even at this advanced age, was florid. His height I should suppose to be about five feet ten inches, and he was perfectly upright. Though neither corpulent nor muscular at eighty-three, it was not difficult to perceive that he once had possessed great bodily strength. He always enjoyed a vigorous constitution, which the regularity of his life did not impair. Like all the Mantchoo Tartars he was fond of hunting, an exercise that during the summer months he never neglected. He had the reputation of being an expert bowman, and inferior only in drawing this weapon to his grandfather Caung-shee, who boasts, in his last will, that he drew a bow of the weight or strength of one hundred and fifty pounds.

Nor were the faculties of his mind less active, or less powerful, than those of his body. As prompt in conceiving as resolute in executing his plans of conquest, he seemed to command success. Kind and charitable, as on all occasions he shewed himself to his subjects, by remitting the taxes, and administering relief in seasons of distress, he was no less vindictive and relentless to his enemies. Impatient of restraint or reverses, he has sometimes been led to act with injustice, and to punish with too great severity. His irascible temper was once the cause of a severe and lasting affliction to himself, and the circumstances connected with it are said to have produced a gloom and melancholy on his mind which never entirely forsook him. About the middle part of his reign, he made a circuit through the heart of his empire. At Sau-tchoo-foo, a city that is celebrated for its beautiful ladies which, being purchased when infants, are educated there for sale to the opulent, he was captivated with a girl of extraordinary beauty and talents, whom he intended to carry back with him to his capital. The Empress, by means of an eunuch, was made acquainted with his new amour, and dreading his future neglect, her spirits were depressed to such a degree, that a few days after receiving the intelligence she put an end to her existence with a cord. The Emperor, on hearing this melancholy news, was greatly distressed and repaired without delay to Pekin. One of his sons, a very amiable youth, fearful of incurring his father's displeasure, had entertained some doubts whether it would be most proper to appear before him in deep mourning for his mother, which might be construed as an insult to the father, who had been the cause of her death, or in his robes of ceremony, which would be disrespectful to the memory of his deceased mother. In this dilemma he consulted his schoolmaster, who, like a true Chinese, advised him to put on both. He did so and, unfortunately for him, covered the mourning with the ceremonial habit. Tchien-Lung, whose affection had now returned for his deceased Empress, and whose melancholy fate he was deeply lamenting, on perceiving his son at his feet without mourning, was so shocked and exasperated at the supposed want of filial duty that, in the moment of rage, he gave him a violent kick in an unfortunate place which, after his languishing a few days, proved fatal.

None of his four surviving sons ever possessed any share of his confidence or authority which, of late years, were wholly bestowed on his first minister Ho-chung-tong. He had a due sense of religious duties, which he regularly performed every morning. Having made a vow at the early part of his reign that, should it please heaven to grant him to govern his dominions for a complete cycle, or sixty years, he would then retire, and resign the throne to his successor, he religiously observed it on the accomplishment of the event. The sincerity of his faith may partly be inferred from the numerous and splendid temples he built and endowed in different parts of oriental Tartary, of which the Poo-ta-la, or convent of Budha at Gehol, is the most magnificent. It is said indeed, from the circumstance of his long and fortunate reign, he had, in his later years, entertained an idea, that the Lama, or Budha, or Fo, for they are all the same personage, had condescended to become incarnate in his person. "However wild and extravagant," observes Lord Macartney, "such a conceit may be regarded, we know from history how much even the best understandings may be perverted by prosperity, and that human nature, not satisfied with the good things of this world, sometimes wishes to anticipate the condition and felicity of the next. If Alexander scorned to own less than Jupiter Ammon for his father, if many Roman Emperors extorted altars and sacrifices in their lifetime, if, even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, an English nobleman[13] encouraged the belief of his descent from a swan, and was complimented in a dedication upon his feathered pedigree, a similar infatuation may be the less inexcusable in Kien-Long, a monarch, the length and happiness of whose reign, the unlimited obedience of whose incalculable number of subjects, and the health and vigour of whose body, have hitherto kept out of his view most of those circumstances that are apt to remind other men of their misery and mortality."

[13] Duke of Buckingham. See the notes on this character in Shakespear's Henry VIII. Act. i, Scene 2.

Till his last illness he continued to rise at three o'clock in the morning, both in winter and summer. He usually took some cordial to fortify his stomach, and then repaired to his private devotions at one of his temples. After this he read the dispatches of his great officers, both civil and military, who from their different stations were ordered to write to him directly, and not to the tribunals as had usually been the case. About seven he took his breakfast of tea, wines, and confectionary, when he transacted business with the first minister, consulting with, or directing, him in the weighty matters of state, previous to their appearing in regular form before the respective departments to which they belonged. He had then a kind of levee, which was usually attended by the Collaos, or ministers, and the presidents of the departments or public boards. At eleven refreshments were again served up and, after business was over, he either amused himself in the women's apartments, or walked round his palace or gardens. Between three and four he usually dined, after which he retired to his private rooms and employed himself in reading or writing till bed-time, which was always regulated by, and seldom later than, the setting of the sun.

He was fully persuaded that his uninterrupted health was chiefly owing to his early retiring to rest, and early rising; an observation, indeed, that in our country has grown into a maxim, and maxims are generally grounded on truth. The late Lord Mansfield made a point for many years of enquiring from all the aged persons, that at any time appeared before him to give evidence, into their particular mode of living, in order that he might be able to form some general conclusion with regard to the causes of their longevity. The result of his observations was, that he could draw no inference from their intemperance or abstemiousness with regard to diet or drinking, but that they all agreed in one point, that of being early risers.

Tchien-Lung resigned the throne of China to his fifteenth son, the present Kia-king, in February 1796, having completed a reign of sixty years; and he died in the month of February 1799, at the advanced age of eighty-nine years.

When the Tartars conquered China, they found all the great offices of state filled by eunuchs, and the palace swarmed with these creatures; the greater part was immediately displaced, and other Chinese of talent and education were put into their places. Having, however, adopted the laws and customs of the conquered, it became necessary to keep up the usual establishment of women in the palace, the inevitable consequence of which was the retention of a certain number of eunuchs to look after them. And they are at this moment as numerous, perhaps, in all the palaces, as they were at the conquest, but none of them are dignified with any office of trust or importance in the state. They consider themselves, however, as elevated far above the plebeian rank; and a bunch of keys or a birch broom gives them all the airs and insolence of office.

Of these eunuchs there are two kinds. The one is so far emasculated as never to have the consolation of being a father; the other must submit to lose every trace of manhood. The first are entrusted with the inspection and superintendance of the buildings, gardens, and other works belonging to the imperial palaces, which they are required to keep in order. The Rasibus, as the missionaries call them, are admitted into the interior of the palace. These creatures paint their faces, study their dress, and are as coquettish as the ladies, upon whom indeed it is their chief business to attend. The greatest favourite sleeps in the same room with the Emperor, to be ready to administer to his wishes; and in this capacity he finds numberless opportunities to prejudice his master against those for whom he may have conceived a dislike; and instances are not wanting where the first officers in the state have been disgraced by means of these creatures.

They are equally detested and feared by the princes of the blood who reside in the palace, by the court officers, and by the missionaries in the employ of government. The latter find it necessary to make frequent, and sometimes expensive, presents to those in particular about the person of his Imperial Majesty. Should any of these gentlemen happen to carry about with him a watch, snuff-box, or other trinket, which the eunuch condescends to admire, there is no alternative; the missionary takes the hint, and begs his acceptance of it, knowing very well that the only way to preserve his friendship is to share with him his property. An omission of this piece of civility has been productive of great injury to the European. The gentleman who regulates and keeps in order the several pieces of clock-work in the palace assured me, that the old eunuch, who was entrusted with the keys of the rooms, used to go in by night and purposely derange and break the machinery, that he might be put to the trouble and expence of repairing it. This happened to him so often that, at length, he became acquainted with the secret of applying the proper preventive, which although expensive was still less vexatious than the constant reparation of the mischief done to the articles of which he had the superintendance.

The Chinese eunuchs are addicted to all the vices that distinguish these creatures in other countries. There is scarcely one about the palace, whether of the class of porters and sweepers, or of that which is qualified for the inner apartments, but have women in their lodgings, who are generally the daughters of poor people, from whom they are purchased, and are consequently considered as their slaves. It is difficult to conceive a condition in life more humiliating, or more deplorable, than that of a female slave to an eunuch; but happily for such females, in this country the mental powers are not very active. Several of the missionaries assured me of the truth of this fact, which indeed I have strong reasons for believing even of the Rasibus. The keeper of the hall of audience once took me to his lodgings, but on coming to the door he desired me to wait till he had made some arrangements within; the meaning of which was, until he had removed his lady out of the way; nor was he in the least displeased at my hinting this to him. Being one of the favourite attendants of the ladies of the court, he was of course a black eunuch. He was the most capricious creature in the world; being sometimes extremely civil and communicative, sometimes sullen, and not deigning to open his lips: and whenever he took it into his head to be offended, he was sure to practice some little revenge. I fancy he was clerk of the kitchen, for the quality and the quantity of our dinner generally depended on the state of his humour. When the report of the Embassador's making conditions with regard to the ceremony of introduction first reached Yuen-min-yuen, he was more than usually peevish, and conceived, as he thought, a notable piece of revenge. Some pains had been taken to arrange the presents in such a manner in the great hall as to fill the room well, and set them off to the best advantage. The old creature, determined to give us additional trouble and to break through the arrangement that had been made, desired that the whole might be placed at one end of the room. On my objecting to this he pretended to have received the Emperor's order, and that at all events it must be obeyed; and the reason he assigned for the change was, "that his Majesty might see them at once from his throne, without being at the trouble of turning his head."

The great number of these creatures about the palace of Yuen-min-yuen made my residence there extremely disagreeable. They seemed, indeed, to be placed as spies on our conduct. If I attempted to move ever so little beyond the court of our apartments, I was sure of being watched and pursued by some of them; to persist in my walk would have thrown the whole palace in an uproar. I one day happened inadvertently to stray through a thicket, which it seems led towards the apartments of the ladies, but I had not proceeded far before I heard several squalling voices in the thicket, which I soon recognised to be those of eunuchs. They had run themselves out of breath in seeking me, and my old friend of the kitchen was not to be pacified for putting him to the hazard, as he pretended, of losing his head by my imprudence.

The eunuchs and the women are the only companions of the Emperor in his leisure hours: of the latter, one only has the rank of Empress, after whom are two Queens and their numerous attendants, which constitute the second class of the establishment; and the third consists of six Queens, and their attendants. To these three ranks of his wives are attached one hundred ladies, who are usually called his concubines, though they are as much a legal part of his establishment as the others. They would seem to be of the same description, and to hold the same rank as the handmaids of the ancient Israelites. Their children are all considered as branches of the Imperial family, but the preference to the succession is generally given to the male issue of the first Empress, provided there should be any. This however is entirely a matter of choice, the Emperor having an uncontrouled power of nominating his successor, either in his own family or out of it. The daughters are usually married to Tartar princes, and other Tartars of distinction, but rarely, if ever, to a Chinese.

On the accession of a new Emperor, men of the first rank and situation in the empire consider themselves as highly honoured and extremely fortunate, if the graces of their daughters should prove sufficient to provide them a place in the list of his concubines; in which case, like the nuns in some countries of Europe, they are doomed for ever to reside within the walls of the palace. Such a fate, however, being common in China in a certain degree to all women-kind, is less to be deplored than the similar lot of those in Europe, where one sex is supposed to be entitled to an equal degree of liberty with the other; and as the custom of China authorizes the sale of all young women by their parents or relations to men they never saw, and without their consent previously obtained, there can be no hardship in consigning them over to the arms of the prince; nor is any disgrace attached to the condition of a concubine, where every marriage is a legal prostitution. At the death of the sovereign all his women are removed to a separate building, called by a term which, divested of its metaphor, implies the Palace of Chastity, where they are doomed to reside during the remainder of their lives.



CHAP. VI.

Language.—Literature, and the fine Arts.—Sciences.—Mechanics, and Medicine.

Opinion of the Chinese Language being hieroglyphical erroneous.—Doctor Hager's mistakes.—Etymological Comparisons fallacious.—Examples of—Nature of the Chinese written Character.—Difficulty and Ambiguity of.—Curious Mistake of an eminent Antiquarian.—Mode of acquiring the Character.—Oral Language.—Mantchoo Tartar Alphabet.—Chinese Literature.—Astronomy.—Chronology.—Cycle of sixty Years.—Geography. —Arithmetic.—Chemical Arts.—Cannon and Gunpowder.—Distillation. —Potteries.—Silk Manufactures.—Ivory.—Bamboo.—Paper.—Ink. —Printing.—Mechanics.—Music.—Painting.—Sculpture.—Architecture. —Hotel of the English Embassador in Pekin.—The Great Wall.—The Grand Canal.—Bridges.—Cemeteries.—Natural Philosophy.—Medicine.—Chinese Pharmacopoeia.—Quacks.—Contagious Fevers.—Small pox.—Opthalmia. —Venereal Disease.—Midwifery.—Surgery.—Doctor Gregory's Opinion of their Medical Knowledge.—Sir William Jones's Opinion of their general Character.

If no traces remained, nor any authorities could be produced, of the antiquity of the Chinese nation, except the written character of their language, this alone would be sufficient to decide that point in its favour. There is so much originality in this language, and such a great and essential difference between it and that of any other nation not immediately derived from the Chinese, that not the most distant degree of affinity can be discovered, either with regard to the form of the character, the system on which it is constructed, or the idiom, with any other known language upon the face of the globe. Authors, however, and some of high reputation, have been led to suppose that, in the Chinese character, they could trace some relation to those hieroglyphical or sacred inscriptions found among the remains of the ancient Egyptians; others have considered it to be a modification of hieroglyphic writing, and that each character was the symbol or comprehensive form of the idea it was meant to express, or, in other words, an abstract delineation of the object intended to be represented. To strengthen such an opinion, they have ingeniously selected a few instances where, by adding to one part, and curtailing another, changing a straight line into a curved one, or a square into a circle, something might be made out that approached to the picture, or the object of the idea conveyed by the character as, for example, the character [Chinese: tin], representing a cultivated piece of ground, they supposed to be the picture of an inclosure, turned up in ridges; yet it so happens that, in this country, there are no inclosures; the character, [Chinese: kǒu] a mouth, has been considered by them as a very close resemblance of that object; [Chinese: shng] and [Chinese: xi] above and below, distinctly marked these points of position; the character [Chinese: rn], signifying man, is, according to their opinion, obviously an abbreviated representation of the human figure; yet the very same character, with an additional line across, thus [Chinese: d], which by the way approaches nearer to the human figure, having now arms as well as legs, signifies the abstract quality great; and with a second line thus [Chinese: tiān] the material or visible heaven, between either of which and man it would be no easy task to find out the analogy; and still less so to trace an affinity between any of them, and [Chinese: quǎn] which signifies a dog.

It is true certain ancient characters are still extant, in which a rude representation of the image is employed; as for instance, a circle for the sun, and a crescent for the moon, but these appear to have been used only as abbreviations, in the same manner as these objects are still characterized in our almanacks, and in our astronomical calculations. Thus also the kingdom of China is designed by a square, with a vertical line drawn through the middle, in conformity perhaps with their ideas of the earth being a square, and China placed in its center; so far these may be considered as symbols of the objects intended to be represented. So, also, the numerals one, two, three, being designed by [Chinese: yī] [Chinese: r] [Chinese: sān], would naturally suggest themselves as being fully as convenient for the purpose, and perhaps more so than any other; and where the first series of numerals ended, which according to the universal custom of counting by the fingers was at ten, the very act of placing the index of the right hand on the little finger of the left would suggest the form of the vertical cross [Chinese: sh] as the symbol or representation of the number ten.

I cannot avoid taking notice in this place of a publication of Doctor Hager, which he calls an "Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese." In this work he has advanced a most extraordinary argument to prove an analogy between the ancient Romans and the Chinese, from the resemblance which he has fancied to exist between the numeral characters and the numeral sounds made use of by those two nations. The Romans, he observes, expressed their numerals one, two, three, by a corresponding number of vertical strokes I. II. III. which the Chinese place horizontally [Chinese: yī] [Chinese: r] [Chinese: sān]. The Romans designed the number ten by an oblique cross X, and the Chinese by a vertical one [Chinese: sh]. This resemblance in the forming of their numerals, so simple and natural that almost all nations have adopted it, is surely too slight a coincidence for concluding, that the people who use them must necessarily, at some period or other, have had communication together. The Doctor however seems to think so, and proceeds to observe, that the three principal Roman cyphers, I. V. X. or one, five and ten, are denoted in the Chinese language by the same sounds that they express in the Roman alphabet. This remark, although ingenious, is not correct. One and five, it is true, are expressed in the Chinese language by the y and ou of the French, which it may be presumed, were the sounds that the letters I. and V. obtained in the ancient Roman alphabet; but with regard to the ten, or X, which, he says, the Chinese pronounce xe, he is entirely mistaken, the Chinese word for ten in Pekin being shee, and in Canton shap. This error the Doctor appears to have been led into by consulting some vocabulary in the Chinese and Portuguese languages; in the latter of which the letter X is pronounced like our sh. But admitting, in its fullest extent, the resemblance of some of the numerals used by the two nations, in the shape of the character, and of others in the sound, it certainly cannot be assumed to prove any thing beyond a mere accidental coincidence.

The earliest accounts of China, after the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, being written by Portuguese missionaries, and the Chinese proper names still remaining to be spelt in the letters of that alphabet, have led several etymologists into great errors, not only with regard to the letter X, but more particularly in the m final, and the h incipient, the former being pronounced ng, and the latter with a strong aspirate, as sh. Thus the name of the second Emperor of the present dynasty is almost universally written in Europe Cam-hi, whereas it is as universally pronounced in China Caung-shee.

The learned Doctor seems to be still less happy in his next conjecture, where he observes that, as the Romans expressed their five by simply dividing the X, or ten, so also the ancient character signifying five with the Chinese was X or ten between two lines thus indicating, as it were, that the number ten was divided in two; the Doctor seems to have forgotten that he has here placed his cross in the Roman form, and not as the Chinese write it; and it is certainly a strange way of cutting a thing in two, by enclosing it between two lines; but the learned seldom baulk at an absurdity, when a system is to be established. The Chinese character for five is [Chinese: wǔ].

Of all deductions, those drawn from etymological comparisons are, perhaps, the most fallacious. Were these allowed to have any weight, the Chinese spoken language is of such a nature, that it would be no difficult task to point out its relationship to that of every nation upon earth. Being entirely monosyllabic, and each word ending in a vowel or a liquid, and being, at the same time, deprived of the sounds of several letters in our alphabet, it becomes necessarily incapable of supplying any great number of distinct syllables. Three hundred are, in fact, nearly as many as an European tongue can articulate, or ear distinguish. It follows, of course, that the same sound must have a great variety of significations. The syllable ching, for example, is actually expressed by fifty-one different characters, each having a different, unconnected, and opposite meaning; but it would be the height of absurdity to attempt to prove the coincidence of any other language with the Chinese, because it might happen to possess a word something like the sound of ching, which might also bear a signification not very different from one of those fifty-one that it held in the Chinese.

The Greek abounds with Chinese words. [Greek: kyn], a dog, is in Chinese both keou and keun, expressive of the same animal; [Greek: eu], good, is not very different from the Chinese hau, which signifies the same quality; and the article [Greek: to] is not far remote from ta, he, or that. Both Greeks and Romans might recognise their first personal pronoun [Greek: eg] or ego in go, or as it is sometimes written ngo. The Italian affirmative si is sufficiently near the Chinese shee, or zee, expressing assent. The French tang, and the Chinese tang, a pond or lake, are nearly the same, and their two negatives pas and poo are not very remote. Lex, loi, le, law, compared with leu, lee, laws and institutes, are examples of analogy that would be decisive to the etymological inquirer. The English word mien, the countenance, and the Chinese mien, expressing the same idea, are nothing different, and we might be supposed to have taken our goose from their goo. To sing is chaung, which comes very near our chaunt. The Chinese call a cat miau, and so does the Hottentot. The Malay word to know is tau, and the Chinese monosyllable for the same verb is also tau, though in conversation they generally use the compound tchee-tau, each of which separately have nearly the same meaning. The Sumatrans have mau for mother, the Chinese say moo. On grounds equally slight with these have many attempts been made to form conclusions from etymological comparisons. If I mistake not, the very ingenious Mr. Bryant makes the word gate a derivative from the Indian word ghaut, a pass between mountains. Surely this is going a great deal too far for our little monosyllable. Might we not with as great a degree of propriety fetch our shallow or shoal from China, where sha-loo signifies a flat sand, occasionally covered with the tide? A noted antiquarian has been led into some comical mistakes in his attempt to establish a resemblance between the Chinese and the Irish languages, frequently by his having considered the letters of the continental alphabets, in which the Chinese vocabulary he consulted was written, to be pronounced in the same manner as his own[14].

[14] For the curiosity of those who may be inclined to speculate in etymological comparisons between the Chinese and other languages, I here subjoin a short list of words in the former, expressing some of the most striking objects in the creation, a few subjects of natural history, and of such articles as from their general use are familiar to most nations, these being of all others the most likely to have retained their primitive names. The orthography I have used is that of the English language.

The Earth tee The Air kee Fire ho Water swee The Sea hai A River ho A Lake tang A Mountain shan A Wilderness ye-tee The Sun jee-to The Moon yu The Stars sing The Clouds yun Rain yeu Hail swee-tan Snow sw Ice ping Thunder luie Lightning shan-tien The Wind fung The Day jee or tien The Night ye or van shang The Sky or Heaven tien The East tung The West see The North pee The South nan Man jin Woman foo-jin A Quadruped shoo A Bird kin A Fish eu An Insect tchong A Plant tsau A Tree shoo A Fruit ko-ste A Flower wha A Stone shee Gold tchin Silver in tse Copper tung Lead yuen Iron ti The Head too The Hand shoo The Heart sin The Leg koo The Foot tchiau The Face mien The Eyes yen-shing The Ears cul-to The Hair too fa An ox nieu A Camel loo-too A Horse ma An Ass loo-tse A Dog kioon A Frog tchoo A Sheep yang A Goat, or mountain Sheep shan-yang A Cat miau A Stag shan loo A Pidgeon koo-tse Poultry kee An Egg kee-tan A Goose goo Oil yeo Rice mee Milk nai Vinegar tsoo Tobacco yen Salt yen Silk tsoo Cotton mien-wha Flax Plant ma Hemp ma Wool (Sheep's Hair) yangmau Coals tan Sugar tang Cheese, they have none but thick Milk nai-ping, or iced milk A House shia A Temple miau A Bed tchuang A Door men A Table tai A Chair ye-tz A Knife tau A Pitcher ping A Plough lee An Anchor mau A Ship tchuan Money tsien

I must observe, however, for the information of these philologists, that scarcely two provinces in China have the same oral language. The officers and their attendants who came with us from the capital could converse only with the boatmen of the southern provinces, through the medium of an interpreter. The character of the language is universal, but the name or sound of the character is arbitrary. If a convention of sounds could have been settled like a convention of marks, one would suppose that a commercial intercourse would have effected it, at least in the numeral sounds, that must necessarily be interchanged from place to place and myriads of times repeated from one corner of the empire to the other. Let us compare then the numerals of Pekin with those of Canton, the two greatest cities in China.

Pekin. Canton. 1. Ye yat 2. ul ye 3. san saam 4. soo see 5. ou um 6. leu lok 7. tchee tsat 8. pas pat 9. tcheu kow 10. shee shap 11. shee-ye shap-yat 12. shee-ul shap-ye 20. ul-shee ye-shap 30. san-shee saam-shap 31. san-shee-ye saam-shap-yat 32. san-shee-ul saam-shap-ye 100. pe paak 1000. tsien tseen 10,000. van man 100,000. she-van shap-man

If then, in this highly civilized empire, the oral language of the northern part differs so widely from the southern that, in numerous instances, by none of the etymological tricks[15] can they be brought to bear any kind of analogy; if the very word which in Pekin implies the number one, be used in Canton to express two, how very absurd and ludicrous must these learned and laboured dissertations appear, that would assign an oriental origin to all our modern languages?

[15] Such as the addition, deduction, mutation, and transposition of letters, or even syllables. Thus Mr. Webbe thinks that the derivation of the Greek [Greek: gyn] a woman, from the Chinese na-gin, is self-evident.

Whatever degree of affinity may be discovered between the sounds of the Chinese language and those of other nations, their written character has no analogy whatsoever, but is entirely peculiar to itself. Neither the Egyptian inscriptions, nor the nail-headed characters, or monograms, found on the Babylonian bricks, have any nearer resemblance to the Chinese than the Hebrew letters have to the Sanscrit; the only analogy that can be said to exist between them is, that of their being composed of points and lines. Nor are any marks or traces of alphabetic writing discoverable in the composition of the Chinese character; and, if at any time, hieroglyphics have been employed to convey ideas, they have long given way to a collection of arbitrary signs settled by convention, and constructed on a system, as regular and constant as the formation of sounds in any of the European languages arises out of the alphabets of those languages.

The history of the world affords abundant evidence that, in the dawn of civilization, most nations endeavoured to fix and to perpetuate ideas by painting the figures of the objects that produced them. The Egyptian priesthood recorded the mysteries of their religion in graphic emblems of this kind; and the Mexicans, on the first arrival of the Spaniards, informed their prince Montezuma of what was passing by painting their ideas on a roll of cloth. There is no way so natural as this of expressing, and conveying to the understanding of others, the images that pass in the mind, without the help of speech. In the course of the present voyage, an officer of artillery and myself were dispatched to make observations on the small island of Collao, near the coast of Cochin-China. In order to make the natives comprehend our desire to procure some poultry, we drew on paper the figure of a hen, and were immediately supplied to the extent of our wants. One of the inhabitants taking up the idea drew close behind the hen the figure of an egg, and a nod of the head obtained us as many as we had occasion for. The Bosjesmen Hottentots, the most wild and savage race perhaps of human beings, are in the constant habit of drawing, on the sides of caverns, the representations of the different animals peculiar to the country. When I visited some of those caverns I considered such drawings as the employment of idle hours; but, on since reflecting that in almost all such caverns are also to be seen the figures of Dutch boors (who hunt these miserable creatures like wild beasts) in a variety of attitudes, some with guns in their hands, and others in the act of firing upon their countrymen; waggons sometimes proceeding and at others standing still, the oxen unyoked, and the boors sleeping; and these representations generally followed by a number of lines scored like so many tallies; I am inclined to think they have adopted this method of informing their companions of the number of their enemies, and the magnitude of the danger. The animals represented were generally such as were to be met with in the district where the drawings appeared; this, to a people who subsist by the chace and by plunder, might serve as another piece of important information.

The Chinese history, although it takes notice of the time when they had no other method of keeping their records, except, like the Peruvians, by knotting cords, makes no mention of any hieroglyphical characters being used by them. If such were actually the case, the remains of symbolical writing would now be most discoverable in the radical, or elementary characters, of which we shall presently have occasion to speak, and especially in those which were employed to express some of the most remarkable objects in nature. Out of the two hundred and twelve, or thereabout, which constitute the number of the radical signs, the following are a few of the most simple, in none of which, in my opinion, does there appear to be the least resemblance between the picture and the object.

[Chinese] gin, man

[Chinese] koo, a mouth

[Chinese] tee, earth

[Chinese] ts, a son

[Chinese] tsau, a plant

[Chinese] shan, a mountain

[Chinese] sin, a heart

[Chinese] shoo, a hand

[Chinese] fang, space, or a square of ground

[Chinese] yu, the moon

[Chinese] jee, the sun

[Chinese] moo, a tree

[Chinese] swee, water

[Chinese] ho, fire

[Chinese] shee, a stone.

The rest of the elementary characters are, if possible, still more unlike the objects they represent. There seems, therefore, to be no grounds for concluding that the Chinese ever made use of hieroglyphics or, more properly speaking, that their present character sprung out of hieroglyphics. They have a tradition, which is universally believed, that their prince Fo-shee was the inventor of the system upon which their written character is formed, and which, without any material alteration, there is every reason to suppose has continued in use to this day. To Fo-shee, however, they ascribe the invention of almost every thing they know, which has led Mr. Baillie ingeniously to conjecture that Fo-shee must have been some foreigner who first civilized China; as arts and sciences do not spring up and bear fruit in the life of one man. Many changes in the form of characters may have taken place from time to time, but the principle on which they are constructed seems to have maintained its ground. The redundancies of particular characters have been removed for the sake of convenience; and the learned in their epistolary writing have adopted a sort of running hand, in which the form is so very materially altered, by rounding off the angles, connecting some parts and wholly omitting others, as to make it appear to a superficial observer a totally different language. But I may venture to observe, that it has not only not undergone any material alteration for more than two thousand years, but that it has never borrowed a character, or a syllable, from any other language that now exists. As a proof of this, it may be mentioned, that every new article that has found its way into China since its discovery to Europeans has acquired a Chinese name, and entirely sunk that which it bore by the nation who introduced it. The proper names even of countries, nations, and individuals are changed, and assume new ones in their language. Thus Europe is called See-yang, the western country; Japan Tung-yang, the eastern country; India Siau-see-yang, the little western country. The English are dignified by the name of Hung-mou, or Red-heads, and the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and others, who visit China, have each a name in the language of the country totally distinct from that they bear in Europe. This inflexibility in retaining the words of their own poor language has frequently made me think, that Doctor Johnson had the Chinese in his mind when, in that inimitable piece of fine writing which prefaces his dictionary, he made this remark: "The language most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life."

The invention of the Chinese character, although an effort of genius, required far less powers of the mind than the discovery of an alphabet; a discovery so sublime that, according to the opinion of some, nothing less than a divine origin ought to be ascribed to it. It may, however, be considered as the nearest approximation to an universal character that has hitherto been attempted by the learned and ingenious of any nation; each character conveying at once to the eye, not only simple, but the most combined ideas. The plan of our countryman, Bishop Wilkins, for establishing an universal character is, in all respects, so similar to that upon which the Chinese language is constructed, that a reference to the former will be found to convey a very competent idea of the nature of the latter. The universal character of our countryman is, however, more systematic, and more philosophical, than the plan of the Chinese character.

Certain signs expressing simple objects or ideas may be considered as the roots or primitives of this language. These are few in number, not exceeding two hundred and twelve, one of which, or its abbreviation, will be found to compose a part of every character in the language; and may, therefore, be considered as the key to the character into which it enters. The eye soon becomes accustomed to fix upon the particular key, or root, of the most complicated characters, in some of which are not fewer than sixty or seventy distinct lines and points. The right line, the curved line, and a point are the rudiments of all the characters. These, variously combined with one another, have been extended from time to time, as occasion might require, to nearly eighty thousand different characters.

To explain the manner in which their dictionaries are arranged will serve to convey a correct notion of the nature of this extraordinary language. All the two hundred and twelve roots or keys are drawn fair and distinct on the head of the page, beginning with the most simple, or that which contains the fewest number of lines or points, and proceeding to the most complicated; and on the margins of the page are marked the numeral characters one, two, three, &c. which signify, that the root or key at the top will be found to be combined on that page with one, two, three, &c. lines or points. Suppose, for example, a learner should meet with an unknown character, in which he perceives that the simple sign expressing water is the key or root, and that it contains, besides this root, six additional points and lines. He immediately turns over his dictionary to the place where the character water stands on the top of the page, and proceeding with his eye directed to the margin, until the numeral character six occurs, he will soon perceive the one in question; for all the characters in the language, belonging to the root water, and composed of six other lines and points, will follow successively in this place. The name or sound of the character is placed immediately after it, expressed in such others as are supposed to be most familiar; and, in the method made use of for conveying this information, the Chinese have discovered some faint and very imperfect idea of alphabetic writing, by splitting the monosyllabic sound into a dissyllable, and again compressing the dissyllable into a simple sound. One instance will serve to explain this method. Suppose the name of the character under consideration to be ping. If no single character be thought sufficiently simple to express the sound ping, immediately after it will be placed two well-known characters pe and ing; but, as every character in the language has a monosyllabic sound, it will readily be concluded, that pe and ing, when compressed into one syllable, must be pronounced ping. After these, the meaning or explanation follows, in the clearest and most easy characters that can be employed.

When, indeed, a considerable progress has been made in the language, the general meaning of many of the characters may be pretty nearly guessed at by the eye alone, as they will mostly be found to have some reference, either immediate or remote, though very often in a figurative sense, to the signification of the key or root; in the same manner as in the classification of objects in natural history, every species may be referred to its proper genus. The signs, for instance, expressing the hand and the heart, are two roots, and all the works of art, the different trades and manufactures, arrange themselves under the first, and all the passions, affections, and sentiments of the mind under the latter. The root of an unit or one comprehends all the characters expressive of unity, concord, harmony, and the like. Thus, if I observe a character compounded of the two simple roots, one and heart, I have no difficulty in concluding that its signification is unanimity, but, if the sign of a negative should also appear in the same character, the meaning will be reversed to discord or dissention, literally not one heart. Many proper names of persons have the character signifying man for their key or root, and all foreign names have the character mouth or voice annexed, which shews at once that the character is a proper name employed only to express sound without any particular meaning.

Nor are these keys or roots, although sometimes placed on the right of the character, sometimes on the left, now at the top, and then at the bottom, so very difficult to be discovered to a person who knows but a little of the language, as Doctor Hager has imagined. This is by far the easiest part of the language. The abbreviations in the compound characters, and the figurative sense in which they are sometimes used, constitute the difficulty, by the obscurity in which they are involved, and the ambiguity to which they are liable.

The Doctor is equally unfortunate in the discovery which he thinks he has made of a want of order in classing the elements according to the number of lines they contain. The instances he gives of such anomaly are in the two characters of [Chinese] moo, mother; and [Chinese] tien, cultivated ground: the first of which he is surprised to find among the elementary characters of four lines, and the latter (which he asserts to be still more simple) among those of five. The Chinese, however, are not quite so much out of order as the Doctor seems to be out of his province in attempting a critique on a language, of which he really possesses a very superficial knowledge. The first character [Chinese] moo is composed of and the second [Chinese] tien of ; the one of four and the other of five lines according to the arrangement of Chinese dictionaries, and their elementary treatises.

Among the roots or primitives that most frequently occur are those expressing the hand, heart, mouth, and the five elements, earth, air, fire, wood, and water. Man is also a very common root.

The composition of characters is capable of exercising a very considerable degree of ingenuity, and the analysis of them is extremely entertaining to a foreigner. As in a proposition of Euclid it is necessary to go through the whole demonstration before the figure to which it refers can be properly understood, so, in the Chinese character, the sense of the several component parts must first be known in order to comprehend the meaning of the compound. To endeavour to recollect them without this knowledge would be a laborious and almost impossible effort of the mind. Indeed, after this knowledge is acquired, the sense is sometimes so hid in metaphor, and in allusions to particular customs or ways of thinking, that when all the component parts of a character are well understood, the meaning may yet remain in obscurity. It may not be difficult to conceive, for instance, that in a figurative language, the union of the sun and moon might be employed to express any extraordinary degree of light or brilliancy; but it would not so readily occur, that the character foo or happiness, or supreme felicity, should be designed by the union of the characters expressing a spirit or demon, the number one or unity, a mouth, and a piece of cultivated ground, thus [Chinese: f]. This character in the Chinese language is meant to convey the same idea as the word comfort does in our own. The character implying the middle of any thing, annexed to that of heart, was not inaptly employed to express a very dear friend, nor that with the heart surmounted by a negative, to imply indifference, no heart; but it is not so easy to assign any reason why the character ping, signifying rank or order, should be expressed by the character mouth, repeated thrice, and placed like the three balls of a pawnbroker, thus [Chinese: pǐn], or why four of these mouths arranged as under, with the character ta, great, in the center, should imply an instrument, or piece of mechanism. [Chinese: q]. Nor would it readily occur why the character [Chinese] nan, masculine, should be made up of tien, a field, and lee, strength, unless from the idea that the male sex possesses strength, and only can inherit land. But that a smoothness or volubility of speech [Chinese: jn] should be designed by koo, mouth, and kin, gold, we can more easily conceive, as we apply the epithet silver tongue pretty nearly on the same occasion.

If the Chinese had rigidly adhered to the ingenious and philosophical mechanism they originally employed in the construction of their characters, it would be the most interesting of all languages. But such is far from being the case. New characters are daily constructed, in which convenience, rather than perspicuity, has been consulted.

It will follow from what has been said, that every compounded character is not only a word, but also a definition, comprehending in visible marks its full explanation; but no character, however compounded, can have more than a monosyllabic sound, though each part when alone has a distinct sound, as well as sense. Thus, "Happiness," though compounded of four distinct characters, shee, a demon; ye, one; koo, a mouth, and tien, a piece of cultivated ground, has only the simple monosyllabic sound foo, which is unlike that of any one of its compounds.

The sounds and various inflexions incidental to languages in general, are not necessary to be attended to in the study of the Chinese characters. They speak equally strong to a person who is deaf and dumb, as the most copious language could do to one in the full enjoyment of all his senses. It is a language addressed entirely to the eye, and not to the ear. Just as a piece of music laid before several persons of different nations of Europe would be played by each in the same key, the same measure, and the same air, so would the Chinese characters be equally understood by the natives of Japan, Tunquin, and Cochin-China; yet each would give them different names or sounds, that would be wholly unintelligible to one another. When, on the present voyage, we stopped at Pulo Condore, the inhabitants, being Cochin-Chinese, had no difficulty in corresponding, by writing, with our Chinese interpreters, though they could not interchange one intelligible word.

Although, with the assistance of a good dictionary and a tolerable memory, a knowledge of such of the Chinese characters, as most frequently occur, may be obtained by a foreigner; yet the ambiguity to which they are liable, on account of the frequent figurative expressions and substitution of metaphor for the literal meaning, renders their best compositions extremely obscure. Another, and not the least, difficulty to a learner of this language arises from the abridgment of the characters for the sake of convenience, by which the eye is deprived of the chain that originally connected the component parts. In short, it is a language where much is to be made out that is not expressed, and particularly so in what is called fine writing; and a thorough knowledge of it can only be acquired from a familiar acquaintance with the manners, customs, habits, and opinions of the people. Those missionaries even, who have resided in the country the best part of their lives, and accepted employments about the palace, are frequently at a loss in translating and composing the official papers that are necessary to be made out on the occasion of an European embassy.

It is, however, a matter of surprize that, after all that has been published in Europe by the Jesuits of the grandeur, the magnificence, the learning, and the philosophy of the Chinese, so very few persons should have taken the trouble to make themselves acquainted with the language of this extraordinary nation. So little was a professor of Chinese, at Rome, versed in the language he professed to know, that he is said[16] to have mistaken some characters found on a bust of Isis for Chinese, which bust and the characters were afterwards proved to be the work of a modern artist of Turin, made after his own fancy. In Great Britain we have known still less of the Chinese language and Chinese literature than on the continent. It is not many years ago, that one of the small copper coins of China, stamped in the reign, and with the name, of the late Tchien-lung (or as he is usually called in the southern dialect of China Kien-long) was picked up in a bog in Ireland, and being considered as a great curiosity, was carried to an indefatigable antiquary, whose researches have been of considerable use in investigating the ancient history and language of that island. Not knowing the Chinese character, nor their coin, it was natural enough for him to compare them with some language with which he was acquainted; and the conclusion he drew was, that the four following characters on the face were ancient Syriac; and that the reverse (which are Mantchoo letters) appeared to be astronomical, or talismanic characters, of which he could give no explanation.

[16] By Mr. Pauw.



The Mantchoo Tartar characters of another coin he supposed to signify p u r, which is construed into sors, or lot; and it is concluded, that these coins must either have been imported into Ireland by the Phoenicians, or manufactured in the country; in which case, the Irish must have had an oriental alphabet. "In either case," it is observed, "these medals contribute more to authenticate the ancient history of Ireland than all the volumes that have been written on the subject."

I have noticed this circumstance, which is taken from the Collectanea Hibernica, in order to shew how little is known of the Chinese character and language among the learned, when so good a scholar and eminent antiquary committed so great a mistake.

The youth of China generally begin to study the language when they are about six years of age. Their first employment is to learn by name a certain number of easy characters, without any regard to the signification, or without understanding the meaning of one of them, consequently, without adding to the mind one single idea, for five or six years, except that of labour and difficulty. For the name of a character, it may be recollected, has no reference whatsoever to its meaning. Thus fifty-one different characters, of as many distinct significations, have the same name of ching; and if ten or a dozen characters, bearing the sound of ching, should occur in the same page, the learner, in this stage of his education, is not instructed in the several meanings; his object is to acquire the sound, but to neglect the sense. I have been told, that a regular-bred scholar is required to get by heart a very large volume of the works of Confucius so perfectly, that he may be able to turn to any passage or sentence from hearing the sound of the characters only, without his having one single idea of their signification. The next step is to form the characters, commencing by tracing, or going over, a certain number that are faintly drawn in red ink. As soon as they are able to cover these with tolerable accuracy, without deviating from the lines of the original, they then endeavour to imitate them on fresh paper. These operations employ at least four years more of their life. Thus, a young man of fourteen or sixteen years of age, although he may be able to write a great number of characters, for each of which he can also give a name, yet, at the same time, he can affix no distinct idea to any one of them. The contrary method would appear advisable of teaching them first the signification of the simple roots, and the analysis of the compound characters, and afterwards the sounds, or, perhaps, to let the one accompany the other.

Objections of a similar nature to those now mentioned against the mode of Chinese education, have, it is true, been frequently stated with regard to the plan of educating youths in the public grammar schools of our own country; that some of the most precious years of their lives, when the faculties were in growing vigour, and the plastic mind most susceptible of receiving and retaining impressions, are wasted in poring over the metaphysics of a Latin Grammar, which they cannot possibly comprehend; and in learning by heart a number of declinations, conjugations, and syntax rules, which serve only to puzzle and disgust, instead of affording instruction or amusement: that the grammar, or philosophical part of a language, is useful only for the niceties and perfection of that language, and not a subject for boys. In all instances, perhaps, where the language to be learned is made the common colloquial language of the pupil, the objections stated against the use of the grammar may have some weight. But as this is not the case with regard to the Greek and Latin languages in Europe, nor to the written character in China, which differs widely from the colloquial, long experience may, perhaps, in both cases, have led to the adoption of the most eligible method[17].

[17] That the Chinese method, however, is defective, may be inferred from the circumstance of the present Sir George Staunton having not only acquired, in little more than twelve months, and at the age of twelve years, such a number of words and phraseology as to make himself understood, and to understand others on common topics of conversation, but he also learned to write the characters with such facility and accuracy, that all the diplomatic papers of the Embassy addressed to the Chinese government were copied by him (the Chinese themselves being afraid to let papers of so unusual a style appear in their own hand-writing) in so neat and expeditious a manner as to occasion great astonishment. It may be observed, however, that few youths of his age possess the talents, the attention, and the general information with which he was endowed.

But a youth of Europe has a very material advantage over one of China, during the time in which he is said to be poring over his Latin Grammar. He is in the daily habit of acquiring new ideas, from his knowledge of other languages. His mother-tongue supplies him with books, which he is able to comprehend, and from which he derives both entertainment and instruction. Without enumerating the great variety of these that daily engage his attention, I deem it sufficient to observe, that his Robinson Crusoe (the best book, with few exceptions, that can be put into a boy's hand) shews the numberless difficulties to which he is liable in the world, when the anxious cares of his parents have ceased to watch over him; it is there pointed out to him that, arduous as many undertakings may appear to be, few are insurmountable; that the body and the mind of man are furnished with resources which, by patience, diligence, prudence, and reflexion, will enable him to overcome the greatest difficulties, and escape the most imminent dangers. His Tom Jones, however exceptionable in those parts where human failings are represented under an amiable and alluring dress, leaves, upon the whole, a lively impression in favour of generosity and virtue, and seldom fails to excite an indignant glow against perfidy, selfishness, and brutality. The young Chinese has no such relief from his dry study of acquiring the names and representations of things that to him have as yet no meaning. He knows not a word of any language but his own.

The last step in the education of a Chinese is to analyse the characters, by the help of the dictionary, in the manner already mentioned, so that he now first begins to comprehend the use of the written character. Extracts from the works of their famous philosopher Cong-foo-tse (the Confucius of the missionaries) are generally put into his hands; beginning with those that treat on moral subjects, in which are set forth, in short sentences, the praises of virtue, and the odiousness of vice, with rules of conduct to be observed in the world. The eternal mean, in the style and manner of the maxims of Seneca, next follows; and the art of government, with an abridgment of the laws, completes him for taking his first degree, which generally happens when he has attained his twentieth year; but in order to be qualified for any high employment, he must study at least ten years longer.

From this view of the written character, and the mode of education, it will readily occur, that little progress is likely to be made in any of the speculative sciences; and more especially as their assistance is not necessary to obtain the most elevated situations in the government. The examinations to be passed for the attainment of office are principally confined to the knowledge of the language; and as far as this goes, they are rigid to the utmost degree. The candidates are put into separate apartments, having previously been searched, in order to ascertain that they have no writing of any kind about them. They are allowed nothing but pencils, ink, and paper, and within a given time they are each to produce a theme on the subject that shall be proposed to them. The excellence of the composition, which is submitted to the examining officers, or men of letters, depends chiefly on the following points.

That every character be neatly and accurately made.

That each character be well chosen, and not in vulgar use.

That the same character do not occur twice in the same composition.

The subject and the manner of treating it are of the least consideration, but those on morality, or history, are generally preferred. If the following story, as communicated by one of the missionaries, and related, I believe, by the Abb Grozier, be true, there requires no further illustration of the state of literature in China. "A candidate for preferment having inadvertently made use of an abbreviation in writing the character ma (which signifies a horse) had not only the mortification of seeing his composition, very good in every other respect, rejected solely on that account; but, at the same time, was severely rallied by the censor, who, among other things, asked him how he could possibly expect his horse to walk without having all his legs!"

The construction of the colloquial, or spoken language, is extremely simple. It admits of no inflexion of termination, either in the verb, or in the noun, each word being the same invariable monosyllable in number, in gender, in case, mood, and tense; and, as most of these monosyllables begin with a consonant and end with a vowel, except a few that terminate in l, n, or ng, the number of such sounds, or simple syllables, is very limited. To an European they do not exceed three hundred and fifty. But a Chinese, by early habit, has acquired greater power over the organs of speech, and can so modulate his voice as to give to the same monosyllable five or six distinct tones of sound; so that he can utter at least twelve or thirteen hundred radical words, which, with the compounds, are found to be fully sufficient for expressing all his wants.

On this curious subject I am enabled to speak with great accuracy, through the kindness of Sir George Staunton, to whom, indeed, I am indebted for more information in this work than I am allowed to acknowledge. From the best manuscript Chinese dictionary in his possession, he has obligingly taken the trouble to draw out the following abstract of all the simple sounds, or words, in the Chinese language, together with their inflexions or accentuations, by which they are extended as far as any tongue can possibly articulate, or the nicest ear discriminate. The first column shews all the initial letters, or their powers in the language; the second, the number of terminations, or the remaining part of the monosyllable beside the initial; and the third, expresses the number of monosyllabic sounds that may be given to each by inflexion, or modulation of voice, and by making use of aspirates.

Initials. Number of terminations Number of inflexions Power. to each. or accentuations. - 1 Ch. as in Child. 20 131 including aspirates. 2 F. 10 30 no aspirates. 3 G. 11 32 no aspirates. 4 between H. & S. 36 114 all strong aspirates. 5 Y. 16 61 no aspirates. 6 J as in French Jour 14 34 no aspirates. 7 K. 37 206 including aspirates. 8 L. 25 66 no aspirates. 9 M. 22 58 no aspirates. 10 N. 23 56 no aspirates. 11 O. 1 2 no aspirates. 12 P. 21 104 including aspirates. 13 S. 29 86 no aspirates. 14 T. 17 105 including aspirates. 15 Ts. 28 147 including aspirates. 16 between V. and W. 13 39 no aspirates. 17 Sh. 19 60 no aspirates. - 17 342 1331

So that in the whole colloquial language of China, an European may make out 342 simple monosyllabic sounds, which by the help of aspirates, inflexions of voice, or accentuations, are capable of being increased by a Chinese to 1331 words. And as the written language is said to contain 80,000 characters, and each character has a name, it will follow, that, on an average, 60 characters, of so many different significations, must necessarily be called by the same monosyllabic name. Hence, a composition if read would be totally unintelligible to the ear, and must be seen to be understood. The monosyllabic sound assigned to each charter is applied to so many different meanings, that in its unconnected state it may be said to have no meaning at all.

In the business of common life, the nice inflexions or modulations, that are required to make out these thirteen hundred words, may amply be expressed in about fifteen thousand characters, so that each monosyllabic sound will, in this case, on an average, admit of about twelve distinct significations. This recurrence of the same words must necessarily cause great ambiguity in conversation, and it frequently indeed leads to ridiculous mistakes, especially by foreigners. Thus, a sober missionary, intending to pass the night at a peasant's house, asked as he thought for a mat, but was very much surprised on seeing his host presenting him with a young girl; these two objects, so very different from one another, being signified by two words whose pronunciations are not distinguishable, and consequently one or the other requires to be used with an adjunct.

It was a source of daily amusement to our conductors, to hear the equivoques we made in attempting to speak their language. A Chinese, when the sense is doubtful, will draw the character, or the root of it, in the air with his finger or fan, by which he makes himself at once understood.

But as some of these monosyllabic words, as I have observed of ching, have not less than fifty distinct significations, which the nicest tones and inflexions, even of a Chinese voice, are not able to discriminate, such words are generally converted into compounds, by adding a second syllable, bearing some relative sense to the first, by which the meaning is at once determined. Among the significations, for instance, of the monosyllable foo is that of father, to which, for the sake of distinction, as foo has many significations beside that of father, they add the syllable chin, implying kindred; thus, a Chinese in speaking of his parents invariably says foo-chin for father, and moo-chin for mother; but, in writing, the character of chin would be considered as an unnecessary expletive, that of foo being very differently made from any other called by the same name.

The grammar of this language may briefly be explained. The noun, as observed, is indeclinable; the particles te or ti, mark the genitive, and always follow the noun; eu the dative, which it precedes, and tung or tsung the ablative, before which they are also placed. As for example,

Nom. gai love.

Gen. gai-te of love.

Dat. eu-gai to love.

Acc. gai love.

Abl. tung or tsung gai, from or by love. And the same in the plural.

Give me your book,

Keu go NE-TE shoo.

Dear to men,

Quei EU jin.

Come you with him,

Ne-lai TUNG ta.

The adjective is also formed from the genitive of the noun as pai, whiteness; pai-ti white; je heat; je-ti hot; lee, reason; lee-ti, rational; hau goodness; hau ti, good. But when the adjective precedes the noun, as it generally does, the particle ti is omitted as,

hau jin, a good man.

pai-ma, a white horse.

je-swee, hot water.

The plural of nouns is expressed by prefixing some word signifying plurality, as to-jin, many men; to-to jin, a multitude of men; chung jin, all men; and sometimes by a repetition of the word as jin-jin, men.

Adjectives are compared by placing the particle keng before the comparative, as

yeou, soft; keng yeou, softer.

hau, good; keng hau, better.

My book is newer than yours,

Go-te shoo KENG sin ne-te.

The superlative is marked by various particles, sometimes preceding, and sometimes following, the adjective, and it is also formed by repeating the positive, as

hau, hau ti, very good.

whang-whang-ti, very yellow.

The personal pronouns are,

ngo (nasal) or go, ne, ta, go-men, ne-men, ta-men. I, thou, he, we, ye, they.

And they become possessives, in the same manner as nouns are changed into adjectives, by the addition of te or ti, as

go-te, ne-te, ta-te, go-men-te, ne-men-te, ta-men-te. mine, thine, his, ours, yours, theirs.

The verb has likewise neither conjugation nor inflection; and the tenses, or times of action or passion, are limited to three; the present, the past, and the future. The present is signified simply by the verb, as go lai, I come; the past, is expressed by the particle leo, as go lai leo, I did come, or I have come; and the future is formed by placing the particle yau before the verb, as go yau lai, I will come; or, when something very determined is meant to be expressed, the compound yuen-y precedes the verb, as go yuen-y-lai, I am determined to come. It may be observed, however, that although these, and other particles signifying the time and mode of action, are necessary in common speech, yet, in fine writing, they are entirely omitted, which is another cause of the obscurity and difficulty that occur to strangers in the study of the Chinese character.