The Chinese writing is eminently picturesque; and as the language admits of no alphabet, all ideas and objects are conveyed through the medium of groups of characters, each group representing a series of impressions, or opinions. By an ingenious and elaborate combination of strokes, upwards of 40,000 distinct symbols are perfected. This vast array has given rise to the amusing, but erroneous notion, that the Chinese pass their lives in learning to read; so that old and infirm scholars, after having devoted all their days to its accomplishment, have departed this life with the task undone.

Ideographic and phonetic at the same time, the mechanism of the language is intelligible only to a few Europeans; but it is truly surprising that the vernacular of 400,000,000 of our fellow-men, whose literature dates from the time of King David, and whose yearly exchange of merchandise with England amounts to £40,000,000 sterling, should have been so long wrapped in oblivion.

China does not possess, as we do, public libraries and reading rooms, but all who have a taste for reading or desire instruction can readily satisfy their need, as books are sold in the Celestial Empire at prices lower than in any other country in the world; further, all the finest quotations from the best authors are found written on the pagodas, public monuments, faÇades of tribunals, signs of the shops, doors of houses, and interior of apartments, so that, in fact, China may be likened to a huge library, where rich and poor alike can enjoy their country’s literature, and it is deserving of remark that the general prosperity and peace of China has been much promoted by the diffusion of knowledge and education throughout the lower classes.

The construction of the Chinese symbols varies from the square character to the more cursive character of the Seal and Grass, peculiar for their obscurity. The six styles of writing are as follows:—Chuen shoo, or Seal character; Le shoo, or Official character; Keae shoo, or Model character; Hing shoo, or Running character; Tsaov shoo, or Grass character; and Sung shoo, or Sung dynasty character. The preface to this book is written by Lo Fong Loh, Esq., in the “running” character, and is undoubtedly a perfect specimen of caligraphy; his translation is rendered in the following pages.