letters; and thus confirming the progress from pictures to arbitrary signs which I have endeavoured to establish.

The written language of the Chinese, however, is carried to a still higher pitch of perfection; and is, perhaps, rendered as perfect as the system upon which it is founded will allow. It is still altogether a language of things, and was formerly very largely, if not altogether, a language of pictures. The pure picture-style is admitted by themselves to have been the oldest, or that first invented, and they expressly denominate this order of characters sang or hing, "form or image." "The picture," however, observes Dr. Morrison, "does not appear to have ever been intended as an exact representation, such as the picture-writing of Mexico, or the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but only a slight outline." This kind of style is now become obsolete, and is rarely to be met with; but of the next series, or that into which the original or siang style was first transformed, which they call Yu-tsu, probably from the name of the great emperor Yu, or Chow, in whose era the transformation is said to have occurred, it is no uncommon thing to meet with specimens on rings, seals, and other public instruments. These are strictly abbreviated pictures, such as symbols or emblems of some kind or other. But the characters now in use are abbreviations of these abbreviations; and hence have, for the most part, the appearance of being arbitrary marks, though we can still so frequently trace the parent image, as to decipher their origin and reference.

The Chinese is an extraordinary language in every respect. Its radical words do not exceed four hundred and eleven; every one of which is a monosyllable. But as it must be obvious that these can by no means answer the purpose of distinguishing every external object and mental idea, unless varied in some way or other, every one of these four hundred and eleven words is possessed of a number of different tones and combinations with other words; and every tone or combination signifies a different thing; so that the whole vocabulary, limited as it is, may be readily made to express several thousands of ideas. Thus the word fu, which enters into the well-known compound Kong-fu-tsee, or Confucius, pronounced in different manners, imports a husband or father, a town, and various other ideas. So khoû imports a month; but pronounced nasally, as khoong, it denotes empty; and thus the word shu, differently uttered, means both a lord and swine.

The whole of the elementary marks, or keys, as they are called, by which the ideas of this language, for it is not the language itself, are written down and communicated, are still fewer than the elementary words; for they are only two hundred and fourteen, and express such ideas alone as are most common and familiar; as those of plant, hand, mouth, word, sun, nothing, water; every other idea being denoted by compounds, or supposed compounds, of these elementary marks. Thus, the mark for a thicket, if doubled, implies a wood; a union of the two characters of a man and a field signifies a farmer; the characters of a hand and staff united, import parental authority, or a father; and it is from like characters I have selected the specimen of symbols which I have mostly submitted to you as some of those which would probably be invented in the present day, if, by a miracle, we were suddenly to be deprived of all knowledge of alphabetic writing.t

By combinations of this kind, the two hundred and fourteen elementary characters, like the four hundred elementary words, are wonderfully increased, and are daily increasing; while the greater mass have so little resemblance to any one of the genuine elements, that the philologists of the present day regard many of them as primitive or independent signs, formed long subsc quently to the invention of the proper elements, and combined, like themselves, in various ways.

I have said that the sum total of Chinese characters derived from these

* Chinese Miscellany

The following table, compared with the remarks offered in page 281, will more clearly illustrate the pictorial origin of the Chinese characters.

The whole are usually divided by the native philologists into six classes, the first four of which will best serve as exemplifications.

"sources is perpetually increasing; and have also hinted, that from this natural tendency, the language must at length become an intolerable burden even to he most assiduous Chinese scholar. Thus, while all the characters that Bccur in Confucius, in Mung, and the five Kings, or sacred books, forming ogether more than twenty volumes, fall considerably short of six thousand, ncluding the numerous unusual words, found in the four volumes of the Shu and I may add, that the scope is much the same in the celebrated ethical comnent of Tung-tsee, the favourite disciple of Confucius, denominated Ta-hyoh, The Great Sublime or Momentous Doctrine," as also in the Choong-yoong, Zun-zu, and Mun, constituting, conjointly, the four books most revered next o the Kings);-such has been the accession of new terms invented by subequent writers, and often with a forgetfulness of the old, which have hereby,

I. IMAGES: a name given to characters which, in their antiquated form, show very clearly a rough repreFentation of the material objects they denote: as, Modern Form

Ancient Form.

Brightness, now written

a Hermit,

Of this sort there are about 200 characters.

II. ASSOCIATES: meaning words formed by a combination of two or more Images: as,

Ming
Sian

Koo-kin

Their number is very great.

"Eloquence," "Fluency of Speech," literally "Golden-mouth ;” the mark for mouth, which (two lips), being united with the mark for gold, which is the remainder of the character. In Greek XPUσóσт opus, aurea verba ore fundens.

been suffered to become obsolete, that M. de Guignes was able, in his day, to collect and put into his dictionary eight thousand characters: the six national dictionaries that were chiefly in use about a century since, give from theen to about thirty thousand; and, lastly, the Imperial Chinese Dictionary, composed by order of the emperor Kang-khee, in 1710 of our own era, comprises not less than forty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-six characten! Dr. Marshman, in his valuable "Elements of Chinese Grammar," observeS, that in the Imperial Dictionary these stand arranged as follows:

Characters in the body of the work

Added, principally obsolete and incorrect forms of others
Characters not before classed in any dictionary
Characters without name or meaning

31211

6,493

1,639

4,900

43,496

We have here, therefore, a confession by the Chinese lexicographers the selves, that upwards of ten thousand of the characters admitted into the la perial Dictionary, being nearly a fourth of the whole, are useless, and forte most part unintelligible, in the present day; independently of which, “a mo siderable number," observes Dr. Marshman, "of the 31,214 characters adoptai from the former dictionaries have no meaning affixed to them; but are mere given as obsolete, or current but incorrect forms of other characters, to whe the compilers of the dictionary have referred the reader for their meaning Whence we may fairly conclude, that of the characters which are still allowed: figure away in the written language of China, nearly half of the whole cong no ideas whatever, and are altogether representatives without constituen Were we able to follow even the latest of these up to their origin, and w prove that they have not issued, in the remotest manner, from the two hundred and fourteen elementary marks, which Dr. Marshman has endeavoured to do,

III. INDICANTS, OF POINTERS: from their indicating or pointing out the relative form or position of via is predicated: as,

IV. ANTITHETICS, OF CONTRARIES: formed by inverting or reversing the character; and hence requir ing an antithetic or correspondent signification: as,

Modern Forms.

Most of the Chinese characters may be classed under one of these four heads. The two remaining classes do not appear to be so intimately connected with a pictorial or gin.

The two hundred and fourteen elementary keys, or radicals of the language, are divided into seveCİZER classes, according to the number of strokes of which each element or radical consists. It is probable however, that all the more complicated, and, indeed, great numbers of all those that possess more than fr or six strokes, are as strictly compounds as any in the language, though the lexicographers are incapalit of reducing them to their constituent principles; and hence allow them to stand as primitives among such as are of simpler construction; and hence the total number of primitives are reckoned at about sixte hundred, each of them producing from three to seventy-four derivatives; and hereby constituting the great mass of the Chinese written language.

*Elements of Chinese Grammar, with a preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and Colloquial Me ium of the Chinese, & By J. Marshman, D.D., Serampore, 1814, ito.

It

we should probably still find them derived in the same manner from forms or
symbols of things, and that they were at first direct imitations or conven-
tional representatives; still, as I have already shown, united and compounded,
or in some other way modified to express abstract or complicated ideas.
must be obvious, however, that characters thus constituted must be very
loose and perplexing; and such, in fact, they are often found to be, by the
most expert and best instructed natives. It must be obvious, at the same time,
that a system of picture-writing, thus constructed and perfected, may, in a
considerable degree, answer the purpose of alphabetic marks; and it is doubt-
less owing alone to the perfection which this system of writing had acquired
in Mexico, and still exhibits in China, that the ingenious people of both
countries stopped so long at the point of abbreviated emblems, significant of
objects, and never fairly advanced from a legible language for things, to a
legible language for words.

It should be observed, however, as a farther proof of the tendency of picture-characters to advance towards literal, that even in China itself the Mantcheu, or Tartars, have an alphabet, or system of verbal writing, and that the Mantcheu practice has long been acquiring a growing reputation. It should be observed, also, that the Chinese characters themselves have of late been resorted to at Canton, and by Chinese natives, as merely expressive of sounds, and been employed in the formation of an English vocabulary; in consequence, as Sir George Staunton remarks, of the great concourse of persons resid. ing at this station who use the English language. In like manner, the Japanese, fond as they are of copying from the Chinese, have long since departed from their system of marks for things, and addicted themselves to alphabetic characters; sometimes writing them horizontally, and sometimes perpendi

*Among the numerous and important library establishments of the present day, one has lately been opened by the co-operation of a committee of enlightened and public-spirited individuals, for a regular course of instruction by lectures in many of the most extensively spoken languages of the East, and ainong the rest in Chinese. The President is Lord Bexley; among the Vice-Presidents are Sir George Staunton, Bart., and Sir T. S. Raffles; its situation is in Bartlett's Buildings, Holborn; and while instruction in these valuable branches of literature is hereby offered to every one, it is gratuitously bestowed on all Christian missionaries who are desirous of taking advantage of its benefits. It is, hence, emphatically denominated, a" LANGUAGE INSTITUTION IN AID OF THE PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY," and few establishments of the present day are more entitled to the support of the nation, or of the world.

It should be farther stated, moreover, in order to excite the fullest confidence of the public, that the Professor in the Chinese department is the Rev. Dr. Morrison; while those in the Arabic, Persian, Bengalee, and Sanscrit are nearly of equal celebrity, and have the occasional assistance of Professor Lee, of Cambridge; and that all of them have entered into the undertaking with so much zeal and public spirit as to afford their valuable assistance gratuitously.

Nor has this instruction been offered in vain or unsuccessfully. Even in the Chinese department, where many might expect least to be accomplished, the very learned and excellent Professor, in his first Quarterly Report to the Committee, March 1, 1826, has stated, that he has been attended by thirteen students, seniors and juniors, besides several ladies; with the progress of most of whom he has had great reason to be satisfied: and two or three of whom, having attained some previous knowledge of the language, are preparing to carry on the design after his own return to China.

The Institution is also under a deep and inexpressible obligation to Dr. Morrison, for the gratuitons use of his most valuable Chinese library,-by far the first in Europe,-and, perhaps, any where out of Asia; which is now deposited and arranged at the establishment. As a matter of high literary curiosity, I have requested its distinguished owner to furnish me with a brief account of the library for insertion in the present place, and my reverend friend has been kind enough to comply by the following communication, which I give in his own words:

"In the LANGuage InstitutION there is deposited an extensive library of Chinese printed books and MSS., together with a museum intended to illustrate subjects referred to in the books. This Library and Museum are the property of Dr. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China.

"There are between nine hundred and a thousand works; making in all about 10,000 volumes, stitched and bound in the Chinese manner.

"These books contain specimens of the literature of more than three thousand years; from the compilations and original writings of Confucius, five hundred years before the Christian era down to the present time.

"The materials from which Confucius compiled the works he put forth are not extant in any other form than that which he gave them; and therefore, he may be regarded as the oldest Chinese writer whose works have come down to the present day.

"Dr. Morrison has not had time, during his sojourn in Europe, to make out a Catalogue Raisonné of his Chinese library, with a brief account of the chief works, their titles, subjects, authors, date, &c. "They consist of the sacred books of Chinese antiquity, with copious commentaries, written at various periods, and by a great variety of persons; history, ancient and modern; geography, and topography; astronomy; biography; opinions on government; rites and usages of China; religious books of Laoukeu nism, Budhism; and the morals of Confucianism; poetry; historical and other novels; medicine; botany; and the materia medica; notices of foreign nations, and embassies to China; works composed by Jesuit missionaries concerning Europe and Christianity; the European geometry; and the astronomy of the fifteenth century, &c.; a few works on the religion of Mahomet, &c. &c."

Embassy, ii. 576; Hager's Chinese Elements, p. lxi

cularly; both which methods are found in Chinese records, though the perpendicular is by far the most common.

Attempts have been made to prove that the picture-writing of the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Mexicans has proceeded from one common source; yet nothing can be more fanciful, and, apparently, nothing more unfounded; for each possesses a distinct style, derived from an attachment to distinct classes of images, for the most part of a local nature; as the sea-horse, the crocodile, the ibis, the ichneumon, the lotus, and papyrus, birds and other animals with human heads, and men with the heads of birds and dogs, in the Egyptian system; the rabbit, cane, reed, flint, house, flag, and circle, in the Mexican; and cross, parallel, crooked, and angular lines, as the abbreviated symbols of pictures, in the Chinese; derived, for the most part, as Dr. Morrison ingeniously conjectures, from the impressions of the feet of birds on the sand, and the lines on the bodies of shell-fishes.* Each has had a distinct origin, according as mankind in these different parts of the world, and under different circumstances, have found a necessity for recording facts and ideas in remote periods of antiquity; and each, as I have already observed, has an obvious tendency to run into arbitrary and, ultimately, into alphabetical characters, though of different forms and descriptions.

Of all these, the system whose origin we are, perhaps, best capable of tracing historically, is the Phoenician; and here the voice of history completely coincides with the theory now advanced. The oldest Phoenician historian, whose writings have reached us in a few fragments and quotations, is Sanchoniatho, who was contemporary with Solomon, and drew up a history of Phoenicia, from existing monuments, and archives preserved in the college of the Phoenician priests. This history was dedicated to Abibalus, the Pho nician monarch, father of Hiram, king Solomon's ally; and was allowed by the king and the official censors appointed to examine it to be a work of great truth and accuracy. In this history Sanchoniatho places mankind, on their first creation, in Phoenicia; and gives us a genealogy of the Patriarchs, from Adam, or Protogonus, as he calls him, to Taaut, Athoth, or Hermes, the suc cessor of Menes, the first king of Egypt. In a passage of this very curious history, preserved by Eusebius, the author distinctly states, that picturewriting was invented by Ouranus, king of Phoenicia, who appears to have been contemporary with Misor or Misraim, the son of Ham; and that Taaut, the son of Misor, improved upon and abbreviated the picture-writing of Ouranus, either during the reign of Ouranus or of his son Cronus or Saturn; and that Cronus having given Taaut the throne of Egypt, upon the death of Menes, the Egyptian monarch, the latter carried with him this improved picture or symbolical writing into that country. And in another passage he asserts that Taaut afterward carried forward this improvement to the invention of alphabetic characters. "Misor," says he, "was the son of Hamyn; the son of Misor was Taaut, who invented the first letters for writing. The Egyptians call him Thoth; the Alexandrians, Thoyth; and the Greeks, Hermes, or Mercury." He tells us, in a third place, that having thus invented letters, Taaut ordered the Cabiri and Dioscuri, the priests and sages of the country, to employ them in drawing up a history of Phoenicia.

This is a very curious and important relic of profane history: and it is interesting to observe its coincidence with the Mosaic narrative. It makes no mention, indeed, of the deluge, and it introduces two more generations in the line of Cain, from Protogonus, or first-formed, as the term literally implies (the Adam of Moses), to Agroverus, or Noah. It places, however, the first race of mankind in Phoenicia, which, in the latitude in which this term was generally understood, included, as I shall have occasion to show presently, the banks of the Euphrates, on which Moses fixes the garden of Eden: it allows nearly the same period of time between the creation and the era of Misor, or Misraim; and nearly the same number of generations as Moses does; and gives, as closely as may be, the same names to the son and grandson of Noah,-Ham and Misraim being merely transmuted into Ham-yn

• Chinese Dictionary, p. 1.