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lications of every description, and we have also many translations from them into the languages of Europe; but, unfortunately, such translations, from being either too free or too literal, or from the difficulties arising out of the very singular construction of this original language, and the numerous metaphors and local allusions it abounds with, are not always strictly to be relied upon. Taking these obstacles into consideration, together with the rigid restriction on the intercourse of foreigners with the inhabitants, amounting almost to an entire prohibition, except at the single port of Canton, we have a key at once to that want of accurate information to which we have alluded; for it must be observed that the commercial intercourse held at this outport, confined chiefly to the exchange of broadcloth for bohea, and an illicit traffic in opium, is conducted through the medium of a jargon of a mongrel kind, half English, half Chinese, with a sprinkling of bad Portuguese; and in fact the port of Canton-for our people are not admitted into the city-is in comparison with the rest of China what Killibegs is to Ireland.

We have endeavoured from time to time, in various articles in this Journal, to extract from the best published authorities and other sources within our reach, such information on various subjects connected with this vast region and its inhabitants, as might convey a just estimate of the rank which, in our conception, they are entitled to hold among civilized nations; and we have done so under the conviction that an empire, which comprehends about the twelfth part of the habitable portion of the globe, containing a population more than that of all Europe, is a phenomenon in the science of government and statistics not unworthy the notice of the western world. The surface of China, by the most correct maps, may be taken at 1,080,000 square miles, or 1,075,200,000 acres. A recent census makes the population amount to the enormous sum of 360,000,000, which is nearly 30,000,000 more than that which was given to Lord Macartney-but take it at 300,000,000, and we have about 180 persons to a square mile, and 34 acres to each person. If Ireland has 31,250 square miles, or 20,000,000 acres, these would give her about 3 acres to each individual, and 224 persons on every square mile. But the two countries and nations in all other respects are quite different: the distribution of the land in China is, not perhaps quite equally, but fairly portioned out; there are in consequence no overgrown landlords or starving tenants. In China, moreover, there are no priests to incite to assassinations; no riotous assemblies; no midnight murders. Compared with Ireland it is a terrestrial paradise.

In Mr. Davis's account of China, we find every subject brought forward that can throw light on the laws and institutions of a people to whom, we think, that justice has not been rendered, by foreigners, which is their due. Mr. Davis brings to his task advantages which have fallen to the lot of few Europeans. He resided twenty years at Canton, where he at length rose to be chief of the factory; he accompanied Lord Amherst's embassy to Pekin; and he ranks as one of the few Europeans who have ever really mastered the language and literature of China. He has rendered into English several pieces from their romances, their poetry, and their dramatic works; of which last class in all tongues, but more especially in the unique tongue of China, it is particularly difficult to preserve the spirit in a translation. We have a right, therefore, to consider the statements which he has now submitted to the public as containing as full and correct a view of this singular people, of their government, laws, and institutions-and in short, of the whole frame of their society, as the many difficulties with which the subject is beset will admit. His arrangement, perhaps, is not quite as methodical as might have been-and repetitions frequently occur; but everything-with the one exception of the Natural History of China-will be found within the covers of the two volumes.

There are strong grounds for entertaining a belief that the Chinese are an original race; that is to say, that they were the first to establish themselves on the plains of China at a very remote period of antiquity; but whether they descended from the mountainous territories that bound their empire to the west and north-west, or whether the present inhabitants of these upper regions are offsets from them, is a question that admits only of a conjectural answer. Both, however, are apparently sprung from one and the same source; and the change from pastoral and venatorial pursuits to those of agriculture may perhaps be considered more probable than the contrary.

Without attempting,' says Mr. Davis, to deny to China a very high degree of antiquity, it is now pretty universally admitted, on the testimony of the most respectable native historians, that this is a point which has been very much exaggerated. China has, in fact, her mythology, in common with all other nations; and under this head we must range the persons styled Foh-shin-woong, Hoang-ty, and their immediate successors, who, like the demigods and heroes of Grecian fable, rescued mankind, by their ability or enterprise, from the most primitive barbarism, and have since been invested with superhuman attributes.'

Nothing more natural than that men immersed in a state of barbarism should look up to those, who had the merit of rescuing them

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from such a condition, as something more than human; and if Shin-woong, or the divine husbandman,' instructed the barbarians in the art of agriculture, and Hoang-ty partitioned the lands, and contrived a cycle of sixty years to enable them to register events, and to mark the progress of times and seasons-no wonder that such benefactors should excite the gratitude of their unenlightened countrymen, and make them desirous of conferring on them traditional renown. We do not admit that the early history of the country being mixed up with fable is any proof whatever that such men did not exist.

Their best historians relate that, to these chiefs, succeeded the five sovereigns,' the two last of whom, Yaou and Shun, are held up as the patterns of all emperors, down to the present day. To the age of Shun is referred that extensive flood which inundated all the low lands of China, and which has very foolishly been interpreted, by some of the early Romish missionaries, as identical with the Mosaic deluge; though it was evidently nothing more than what has periodically happened since that time-the bursting of the banks of the Yellow River. Yu, the Great, having employed himself eight years in drawing off the waters, was chosen by Shun for his successor. This appears to have been about two thousand years before the birth of Christ. But,' says Mr. Davis, the Chinese have no existing records older than the compilations of Confucius, who was nearly contemporary with Herodotus, and to whom Pope has given a very lofty niche in his 'Temple of Fame'—

"Superior and alone Confucius stood,

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Who taught that useful science-to be good." Confucius was born 550 years before Christ; and how far his compilations took a retrospect, the Chinese, we believe, are not quite agreed. They embraced, however, the annals, whatever these were, of Yaou and Shun, whose doctrines and conversations are frequently quoted by him, and whose merits and examples are held forth, in various parts of his works, for imitation. Civilization, therefore, must have made great advances long before the reigns of these two rulers. The Sacred Instructions,' which, by order of each succeeding emperor, are twice a-year delivered to the assembled multitude, in urging the necessity of parental authority, say, The wisdom of the ancient emperors, Yaou and Shun, had its foundation in these essential ties of human society.' Again, the emperor Kia-King, when he set aside his eldest son from the succession, justified the act by the example of Shun, who conferred the empire on Yu, to the exclusion of his own family. If such princes, still revered as the wise and holy' patterns of the existing

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polity, existed two thousand years before Christ, the civilization of China may have preceded that period by many centuries. Voltaire says, 'S'ils ont plus de quatre mille ans d'annales, il faut bien, que la nation ait été rassemblée et flourissante depuis plus de cinquante siècles;' and, though his cinquante siècles' is a large allowance, we need not be told men do not jump into wisdom, sobriety, and good government all at once.

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We think it was De Guignes who first hazarded the conjecture that the Chinese were a colony from Egypt. That shrewd critic and commentator on the writings of the Jesuits on China, M. Pauw, exposed the absurdity of this supposition; and we entirely agree with Mr. Davis, that such an assumption is not supported by any testimony either direct or circumstantial. In truth, there exists not the slightest shadow of resemblance between the Chinese written characters or symbols and the hieroglyphics of Egypt; and, we may add, neither do the physical characteristics of colour, form, and features in the two races in the least accord-whether we take the present Copts, the figures on the temples, or the mummies in the tombs, to be the true representatives of the ancient Egyptians. And as to those gigantic structures-the pyramids, obelisks, temples, and tombs-which have stood the wear and tear of some thirty centuries or more the Chinese, so far from having anything to compare with them, probably have not a single building, with the exception of the great wall, that has stood the test of two centuries. We had occasion, however, to notice, in an article of our Review (No. CV.) on Egypt and Thebes, a piece of news, which might seem to give some colour to the notion of an early intercourse having existed between Egypt and China. It was contained in a note to the following effect:- Signor Rosellini showed the other day, to a friend of ours, at Florence, a sort of smellingbottle, evidently of Chinese porcelain, and with characters to all appearance Chinese! This was found by Rosellini himself in a tomb which, as far as could be ascertained, had not been opened since the days of the Pharaohs.'

Such was the information that had then reached us; but we now suspect it had been hastily and inaccurately communicated by our friend at Florence. We have since seen two of these smelling-bottles, which Lord Prudhoe purchased from a fellah at Coptos. His lordship was offered others of the same kind at Cairo, where he learned they had been brought from Upper Egypt-but not a word of their having been found in a tomb. Mr. Davis gives an accurate engraving of one which Mr. Pettigrew lent him for the purpose; and there is no doubt of the characters upon this being Chinese. The following is a fac simile taken from Mr. Davis's book :

VOL. LVI. NO. CXII.

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The characters 1 and 2, in the running hand, are too contracted to be made out here; 3 is sung, a species of tree; 4, chung, middle, or in the midst; and 5, ming, which signifies porcelain; but as the latter three are probably used in connexion with the first two-without the knowledge of what these are, it is impossible to make the inscription intelligible. That they are Chinese, however, we can give unquestionable proof. Lord Prudhoe sent to China a fac simile of the characters and flowers on one of these little bottles, altogether different from those on Mr. Pettigrew's, and more of the old running-hand; and so difficult that neither Gutzlaff, Morrison, nor Midhurst, three excellent Chinese scholars, would venture to pronounce with certainty what they were. A Chinese, however, read off the inscription instantly, and without the slightest hesitation; and afterwards, in succession, four or five Chinese did the same. That inscription turned out to be the commencement of a well-known Ode to the new year- The flower opens, and lo! another year.' There was, as on Mr. Davis's little bottle, a flower painted on the reverse.

That these bottles did not come out of a tomb of any of the Pharaohs must be obvious from the single circumstance of the porcelain manufacture of China being of a comparatively recent date.

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The first porcelain furnace on record,' says Mr. Davis, was in Kiang-see, (the same province where it is now principally made,) about the commencement of the seventh century of our era.'

How, then, these Chinese porcelain bottles came into Egypt is the question? to which our answer is undoubtedly through the medium of the Arabs, who are known to have carried on an The following is a fac simile of the running-hand symbols on the bottle of Lord Prudhoe:

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