and the suburbs of cities constructed upon boats. By such means, and the exercise of strict frugality, China suffices to sup port a population unequalled by any other country: taking the official census as a basis, our author rates it at 367 millions. The accuracy of this he has himself tested by the examination of small separate districts, in all of which he has found the census of the government in defect rather than in excess. Another Chinese authority quoted by Remusat, makes the population no more than 140 millions, but this is acknowledged to be wrong.

The Chinese are usually stated by writers on natural history to belong to the Mongol or yellow variety of the human race. But if we even admit the correctness of the mode of classification, the Chinese do not strictly belong to it, as a body. In the southern provinces, indeed, exposure to the sun and air has darkened the colour of the labouring classes, and in every part the peculiar obliquity of the eyes may be remarked; but in the northern districts, the people are as fair as Europeans of the same latitude, and high born females exhibit as brilliant a complexion as the natives of Spain or France. In addition, the facial angle would place many Chinese in the Caucasian race.

If we were to believe the Chinese themselves, and the European writers who have relied upon the authority of Chinese writers, we should infer that a complete history had existed in official records from 2207 years before our æra, and that they had then even a knowledge of the length of the year, founded upon astronomical observation. The origin of the empire is carried up to Foh-hi, several centuries farther back, and posterior to whom happened an inundation which we cannot avoid considering the same as the deluge of Noah. These pretensions to antiquity cannot be supported. The Chinese account for the meagreness of their ancient annals by the destruction of the books and records by Chi-Hoang-Ti, an emperor of the Tsin dynasty, in the year 213 B. C. But he preserved the genealogy of his own family, and the writings of the religious sect of which he was a follower. In a succeeding dynasty, the historic books of Confucius were written down from the recollection of an aged follower of his doctrine, and subsequently a copy was found, which had escaped the catastrophe. To judge from internal evidence, a part at least of this work is a moral fiction, intended to point out by example the character of a good prince, and when it is probably historical, it by no means warrants the superstructure which has been reared upon it. Thus of seventeen emperors, which the modern compilers of annals reckon in the third or Hea dynasty, when authentic history is said to begin, no more than three are mentioned by Confucius, while he who is now called the founder of the dynasty, appears only in the subordinate character of minister.

The earliest regular historian of the Chinese empire, Se-matsien, published his work about ninety-seven years before Christ, and does not venture to fix any date with certainty previous to 841 B. C., under the dynasty of the Tcheou. Those historians, however, who are now generally followed-for nearly all intermediate writers are rejected as schismatics in religion-flourished under the two dynasties of the Song, which governed China from 960 A.D. to 1278 A.D.; and they are the first who attempt to fix dates more early than those admitted by Se-ma-tsien. In spite of all deductions, however, China possesses what no other nation can boast, a regular series of published official annals, continuing without interruption from the reign of Chi-Hoang-Ti, more than two hundred years before our æra, to the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644, A.D. From that date to the present time, the events which have occurred are familiar to Europeans, although the compilations of the official historians are sealed up until such time as a change of dynasty shall occur. For at least 250 years farther back than the reign of Chi-Hoang-Ti, the dates of the accession of emperors may be considered as certain, probable for about four hundred years more, while the general current of events and the names of sovereigns may be received as authentic from the advent of the Tcheou dynasty, said to be in 1112 B. C. Our views of the anterior state of China must be drawn rather from the application of criticism to the annals which are now received, than from any belief in the annals themselves.

The progenitors of the Chinese were not the first settlers of the country their descendants now inhabit, but were preceded by a race of savages, some remains of which are still to be found in the mountains, particularly of the western parts. This second swarm made its appearance in the north western part of China proper, the mountains of which region are still revered by the Chinese as the theatre of their mythology. The founders of the empire were composed of a hundred families, each governed by a patriarchal authority, and perfectly equal in power and privileges. This equality still exists in theory among all the Chinese, and although from time immemorial the nation has been subject to a sway, partriarchal in principle, but despotic in effect, this sway does not rest upon the principle of legitimacy or of divine right, but is solely determined by possession, the emperor de facto being universally recognised as emperor de jure. The same state of equality in the eye of the law continues to the present day. Theoretically speaking, every office is open to every native; rank, however high, never descends to the children of the possessor, and the attainment of high dignities by one of obscure birth, ennobles not his children but his progenitors. The imperial dignity is alone hereditary, yet allegiance to the reigning family is not indefeasible, and at the present day, even loyal

subjects regard the signs of the times as pointing to a change of dynasty.

The families which founded the Chinese empire, brought with them, or speedily acquired, a system of writing different from that employed by any other people, but which has, by their colonies, conquests, and the influence of their civilization, been widely extended in Asia. This was at first limited to the representation of natural objects, and was indeed no more than the rude method employed by the Indians of our country, who can form an imperfect memorial of events in pictured representations. This method reached in Mexico a high degree of perfection, but never acquired on our continent the properties of a written language.

It is the advantage of a system like that of the Chinese, that it records its own history, and we can not only ascertain even at the present moment the original pictured signs on which the written language was founded, but may make well determined inquiries into the state of civilization of the people by whom the signs were used, and the extent of its mental cultivation. The original signs were the images of natural objects, not delineated with skill, or coloured in imitation of nature, but of such rude character as might be traced by children, or by the earliest attempts at the pictorial art. So far from the figures having been brought to a more close verisimilitude by the progress of the art, every step to the perfection of the writing rendered them less and less like the objects they were intended to represent. Still their original form, and the successive steps by which they have acquired their present conformation, are matter almost of authentic history. The symbols have been not only altered in shape, but have been combined in the most complex manner, but the number of primitive images has never varied, and it is rigorously true, that with the small number of signs invented by their barbarous ancestors, the modern Chinese are able to satisfy the forms of expressions demanded by an advanced state of civilization.

The number of the original symbols is about two hundred.* Of these, the visible heavens had furnished seven, namely, the sky, the sun, the moon, stars, clouds, rain, and vapours. Traces of religious belief exist in the representation of a victim offered in sacrifice; and the principle of evil is figured in the form of the head of a demon. Natural inanimate objects furnish seventeen primitive symbols; the art of building, eleven, drawn from the rudest and earliest forms of architecture, but for palace, tower, garden, temple, city, or fortification, no original character is to be found. Twenty-three characters have relation to man, and point out his actions, and his social and domestic relations. In

these, king, man of letters, general, soldier, are not comprised, but we find the representation of a slave and a sorcerer.

The parts of the human body, which have original symbols, are twenty-seven in number; no more than two of these are internal. Dress gives rise to six characters; these are adapted to the very earliest step in civilization, and only satisfy the native sense of decency. Of ornaments, there is only a chain of string beads, like those used by savages; nor is there any thing to recall to mind precious stones, instruments of music, money, glass, or porcelain; neither do we find gold among these characters, although it must have been known at a very remote date, as the rivers and streams of China yield it in a native state.

The names of furniture, domestic utensils, arms, and tools, amount in number to no more than thirty-five. Among these are vases of wood and clay, tables, benches, and chests; of arms, arrows, bows, axes, lances, and halberds; these, however, give no indication of a knowledge of the metals, and even to the present day the character which designates an axe is combined with the image of a stone, marking the material from which it was first constructed. Of agricultural instruments no more than three are designated, a rude sort of hoe, a measure for grain, and a vessel for storing it.

Five domestic animals have names; the dog, the hog, the sheep, the ox, and the horse, and seven wild quadrupeds. Although eleven characters belong to the class of birds, no more than two of these are specific. No more than two symbols relate to fish, the one to those of a long, the other to those of a round figure; and seven suffice for all the animals of an inferior order. Among these is one for shells, which has become the root of all the terms which relate to wealth and to commerce; whence we may infer, that they were the earliest medium of exchange, as in the rude nations of Africa.

The vegetable kingdom is comprised in twenty-six characters, most of which are generic. Among the specific terms are rice and millet, but neither barley nor wheat; garlic and the gourd are the principal esculent vegetables, and the bamboo, so important in the domestic economy of the Chinese, has its symbol. But for the mulberry, the paper tree, the tea plant, and the lac, no simple character is to be found.

To judge, from this list of characters, of the state of the people which employed them, we should infer, that at the time they came into conventional use, the Chinese had ideas of religion demanding expiation by sacrifice, and a superstitious dread of an evil agent, but no idea of intellectual faculties, or even of moral obligation; that they had not cultivated astronomic observation, even of the rudest kind, or acquired any method of dividing time; were not collected in cities, had not erected fortifications,

nor united to worship in temples; that they had no notion of the relations and orders of civil society; were clothed in the rudest vestments, devoid of almost any ornament; that their domestic furniture did not extend beyond a few rude moveables and coarse vessels of wood and earthenware; that war was an object of primary attention, engrossing the whole male population, but that their arms were only such as savages still manufacture without the aid of the metals; that a few animals had attracted their attention, of which some are what are now domesticated; and that the beginning of agriculture was marked only by a knowledge of two species of the cereal gramina.

The people which made use of these signs, could not have had a higher degree of cultivation than the inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific, but even in this rude state they had conceived the idea of a written language. It does not at first sight appear easy to imagine how, in the rude traces first drawn, and which in use deviated more and more from the original, a wolf was to be distinguished from a dog or a fox, or one variety of tree from another. It is still more difficult to imagine how the pictures of physical objects could be made to express human passions, abstract ideas, and the operations of the human mind. These two obstacles have however yielded to the genius of the inventors of the Chinese written language. The names of natural objects were represented each by a combination of two symbols, one of which was generic, and taken from the animal, the tree, or the plant assumed as the type; the other indicated the peculiarities of formation, the habits of life in animals, or the use to which the object was applicable.

Abstract ideas were represented in a still more ingenious manner. Thus, for anger, the symbol of a heart was joined to that of a slave; for seduction, that of a woman with that of a net; a hand holding the character of middle represents an historian, whose duty it is to incline to neither side; the figures of two men face to face, signified to salute, if back to back, to separate, if one behind the other, to follow. With a want of gallantry that even in their highest civilization they still manifest, all faults, vices, and moral defects are referred to the character woman. No doubt they compensate this rudeness in some degree, by deriving from the same source expressions for the ideas of beauty, grace, maternal tenderness, but still their written language attests to the present day the existence of the prejudices of a barbarian people.

The impression most generally received is, that the Chinese language is purely monosyllabic. This is true perhaps in respect to its roots, but is far from being the fact in its actual state. The

*Remusat Mélanges Asiatiques.