classes, only 1,427 characters, which is but four more than the number placed under chou, vegetation," &c.* In short, no grammar is more simple than that of the Chinese written language. This, indeed, may be easily understood from the fact that, as we already intimated, the characters are invariably the same, whether as verbs, substantives, adjectives or participles. Neither cases, genders, numbers, persons, moods, nor tenses make any difference in this respect. What may well seem stranger still, the same characters may be used alternately as a noun, verb, adjective and participle, without the slightest alteration in its form. The changes in meaning are made by means of auxiliary characters. But this characteristic the language possesses, to some extent, in common with our own. Thus, for example, the English noun man undergoes no change in declension, the nominative being man, the genitive, man's, or of a man, dative, to a man, accusative, man, vocative, O man, and ablative, with or by In the illustration we have used the Latin forms, because they present more variety; although there are only three cases in English, the nominative, genitive and objective. In the Chinese there are numeral adjectives to express definite numbers; but when the numbers are indefinite they must be expressed, like other words, by auxiliary terms. As our genitive has s with the apostrophe after it, so the Chinese genitive has tie after it. The Chinese dative is formed by placing eu before the nominative, which corresponds with our to or for, and the Chinese ablative is formed by placing tung before the nominative, which corresponds with our with or by. a man. No European language has so many auxiliary verbs as the English; but no language in the world has so many as the Chinese, for in the latter all the tenses and moods have to be formed by auxiliaries. But there are only three tenses, the present, past, and future. These are expressed as follows: ngo-lai, I come, ngo-lai-leao, I came, did come, or have come, ngo-pee-gai, or ngo-chau-gai, I shall or will come. The qualities of the nouns are expressed in a manner equally simple. The adjectives are generally placed before the substantives, but often after them. We give an instance or two, thus: ta jin, great man, or ye jin, one man, is sufficiently explicit in writing, but in conversation either expression may be ambiguous. To obviate this difficulty, • Dissertation, pp. 87, 88. a particle is introduced in colloquial language, as ye-ko-jin, one man. Still more simple, if possible, are the personal pronouns; they are ngo, I, ne, thou, ta, he. In forming the plural from these, all that is necessary is to affix mun to each, as ngo-mun, we, ne-mun, ye or you, ta-mun, they; and when it is required to convert them into possessive pronouns, it is only necessary to add tie in a similar manner, as ngo-tie, mine, ne-tie, thine, ta-mun-tie, theirs, &c. The limits of an article will not permit us to pursue this branch of our subject at greater length; if we did so, we should be able to devote no attention to Chinese literature; and the object of the present paper is, simply to give a general view of both the language and the literature, reserving more particular and extended remarks for a future occasion. The missionaries, doubtless with the best intention, gave an erroneous estimate of what they considered the almost unlimited copiousness of the Chinese language; and their statements have still the effect of deterring the student from undertaking its study. But if the most copious Chinese dictionary be compared to the dictionary of any of the principal languages of Europe, ancient or modern, it will be found that the words, in almost any of the latter, equal, if they do not exceed, the number of characters in the former. Thus, in the dictionary of Kaung-shee, the best authority in China, there are not more than 35,000 characters; whereas, in Ainsworth's Dictionary, there are 48,000 words, in Scapula's Lexicon, 46,000, in Worcester's Dictionary, upwards of 50,000, in Ben-Allah's Arabic Dictionary, 65,000, &c. True, there are many characters used in writing and speaking not to be found in the Chinese dictionary; but is not the same true of many forms of expression in the Indo-European languages? For example, in no dictionary of the English language do we find all the tenses of the verb. The principal forms are given, but no more. If all were given, the size of the dictionary would be more than doubled. And similar remarks, but slightly modified, will apply to the Chinese. Thus, in the whole of the text of the Ta-tsing-leu-lee, consisting of more than 110,000 characters, the number of distinct characters is less than 17,000. That class of writers disposed to regard all ages and nations as ignorant, save their own, affect to sneer at the high antiquity claimed by the Chinese; but facts cannot be set aside by sneering. The Chinese are everywhere surrounded by evidences of a civilization extending over thousands of years anterior to our era. No fact, of which ocular demonstration cannot be given, is so well attested as that Fohi gave laws to China two thousand five hundred years before Christ. Among oriental scholars there is as little doubt on this point as that Lycurgus gave laws to the Spartans nearly nine hundred years before Christ; or that Solon gave laws to the Athenians nearly six hundred years before Christ. The theory of those, who attempt to prove that China is a comparatively modern nation, is, that the country was a wilderness until after the downfall of the Pharaohs and Egyptian civilization. They tell us that the Chinese Ki is but the Egyptian Atres, so called by the Greeks, and that the Egyptian Menes is identical with the Chinese emperor or king, Yu; but they might as well pretend that Zoroaster and Mohammed were one and the same personage. Not but they attempt to adduce arguments in favor of their hypothesis, at least what they call arguments; such, for example, as that, because the Egyptians lighted torches after sunset, and that the Chinese light lanterns at about the same hour, it must follow that the latter commenced their existence as an Egyptian colony, the same as the Carthaginians were once a Phoenician colony, &c. The theory is not original, however, with our modern critics; its authors are the early missionaries; and it may be doubted whether they believed it themselves. The probability seems to be, that they invented it for the purpose of showing that, different as the Chinese language is from all others, and consequently inconsistent with the biblical account of unity of language, as well as unity of race, it is derived from the same roots as the Greek, the Latin, and the Sanscrit. In other words, it may be regarded as a pious fraud. There are others, again, who will have it that China is a comparatively modern country, if for no other reason than that it was the Jesuits who first made the world acquainted with the country, its language, literature, religion, manners, and customs. These belong to the same class who so long rejected Peruvian bark as an invention of Satan-a drug calculated alike to poison the soul and the body. But if some of these missionaries deemed it necessary to connect the Chinese with the Egyptians, lest it might be supposed that the former were a peculiar people, created, perhaps, at a different time and under different circumstances from those of their neighbors, there were others of the same fraternity who stoutly defended the highest antiquity claimed by the Chinese themselves. And they were decidedly the most learned who pursued the latter course-those best qualified to investigate the subject. As an instance, suffice it to mention the name of the Abbé Perennin, who was perfectly familiar with the oral and written language of China. In reply to the champions of the Egyptian theory, treated with ridicule and contempt by the Chinese themselves, the learned abbé asks the following significant questions: "Your Egyptians," he says, "when going to people China, must evidently have passed through India; was India, at that time, peopled, or not? If it was, would it permit a foreign army to pass through it? If it was not, would not the Egyptians have stopped in India? Would they have continued their journey through barren deserts and over almost impracticable mountains, till they reached China, in order to form colonies there, when they might easily have established them on the fertile banks of the Ganges?" Its great wall alone would prove China to be an ancient empire, and one that enjoyed at a remote age a high degree of civilization. According to Voltaire and many other writers of eminence, even the pyramids of Egypt are puerile and useless masses compared with this gigantic work. Of thirtytwo eclipses calculated by the ancient astronomers of China, twenty-eight have been verified by the mathematicians of Europe. There is no longer any doubt that the art of printing was understood and practised hundreds, if not thousands, of years before the Christian era. To the present day, their porcelain towers are the wonder of the world; and European art and science have hitherto striven in vain to equal them. The extent as well as the number of their libraries is enòrmous.* The dictionary from which Mr. Marshman has taken most of the materials contained in the first part of his Dissertation was compiled under the direction of an emperor of the Han dynasty, who mounted the throne more than two hundred years before our era. Seven or eight editions of this, each enlarged and improved, have since been published.† That * Mr. Davis gives a list of two hundred volumes of Chinese plays in his preface, and Père Premare has translated into French the "Hundred Plays of Yuen." These would show by themselves that there is abundant richness in this department of Chinese literature. † Omitting the Chinese characters, but giving their equivalents, we quote two or three words from M. de Guignes' Dictionary, with the meaning in French and Latin: which is now regarded as a standard authority throughout China, as Worcester's is in our own country, is the dictionary of Kaung-Shee, in which we are told, by one well competent to judge of its merits, that "the forms, the names and the different senses of the characters are defined and supported with a fulness and precision which scarcely admit of improvement. The arrangement, too, is so simple and yet so perspicuous, that one totally unacquainted with the Chinese characters may, in a few hours, make himself master of it with perfect ease. The only desideratum to the study of Chinese is a translation of this dictionary; and in this nothing is necessary besides merely rendering it into English, in the order in which it lies; it being in my opinion almost impossible for any European to alter it with advantage."* What more could be said of the best dictionary of any European language? Even A people, who can boast of many well compiled and copious dictionaries, must also be able to boast of a copious literature. This is certainly true of the Chinese. Germany is not so fertile in books, or book-making, as China. The catalogue alone of a Chinese library not unfrequently amounts to hundreds of volumes. The Emperor, KhianLeung, who reigned at the close of last century, had a private library at Nankin, the catalogue of which extended to 122 printed volumes, which included every variety of works on literature, science, and the arts; and we are told by the Abbé Huc, and several other reliable travellers, that the principal public library at Peking surpasses all other libraries in the world in extent, as much as the great wall of China surpasses all other walls. It may be said, that the books are not as valuable as those found in European libraries. This is probably true; at least, they would not be found as valuable to Europeans as their own; but could not the Chinese say the same of ours with equal truth? Those of them who have travelled, and are "Yen-Faire un compliment de condoléance à quelqu'un, sur le perte de quelques parens, ou d'une dignité. Aliquem, sive ob dignitatem amissam, sive ab consanguineos vitâ functos, invisare et consolari." "Ouang-Eaux profondes et étendues, débordement d'eaux, inondation, surnom. Aquæ profunda et amplæ aquarum exundatio, inunditio, cognomen." Clarum, album, patens." "Yao-Grand, obscur. Amplum, obscurum, profundum," &c. • Marshman's Dissertation, p. 108. |