Travels in China Part 10

--Hotel of the English Emba.s.sador in Pekin.--The Great Wall.--The Grand Ca.n.a.l.--Bridges.--Cemeteries.--Natural Philosophy.--Medicine.--Chinese Pharmacopoeia.--Quacks.--Contagious Fevers.--Small pox.--Opthalmia.

--Venereal Disease.--Midwifery.--Surgery.--Doctor Gregory's Opinion of their Medical Knowledge.--Sir William Jones's Opinion of their general Character._

If no traces remained, nor any authorities could be produced, of the antiquity of the Chinese nation, except the written character of their language, this alone would be sufficient to decide that point in its favour. There is so much originality in this language, and such a great and essential difference between it and that of any other nation not immediately derived from the Chinese, that not the most distant degree of affinity can be discovered, either with regard to the form of the character, the system on which it is constructed, or the idiom, with any other known language upon the face of the globe. Authors, however, and some of high reputation, have been led to suppose that, in the Chinese character, they could trace some relation to those hieroglyphical or sacred inscriptions found among the remains of the ancient Egyptians; others have considered it to be a modification of hieroglyphic writing, and that each character was the symbol or comprehensive form of the idea it was meant to express, or, in other words, an abstract delineation of the object intended to be represented. To strengthen such an opinion, they have ingeniously selected a few instances where, by adding to one part, and curtailing another, changing a straight line into a curved one, or a square into a circle, something might be made out that approached to the picture, or the object of the idea conveyed by the character as, for example, the character ?, representing _a cultivated piece of ground_, they supposed to be the picture of an inclosure, turned up in ridges; yet it so happens that, in this country, there are no inclosures; the character, ? a _mouth_, has been considered by them as a very close resemblance of that object; ? and ? _above_ and _below_, distinctly marked these points of position; the character ?, signifying _man_, is, according to their opinion, obviously an abbreviated representation of the human figure; yet the very same character, with an additional line across, thus ?, which by the way approaches nearer to the human figure, having now arms as well as legs, signifies the abstract quality _great_; and with a second line thus ? the material or visible _heaven_, between either of which and _man_ it would be no easy task to find out the a.n.a.logy; and still less so to trace an affinity between any of them, and ? which signifies _a dog_.

It is true certain ancient characters are still extant, in which a rude representation of the image is employed; as for instance, a circle for the sun, and a crescent for the moon, but these appear to have been used only as abbreviations, in the same manner as these objects are still characterized in our almanacks, and in our astronomical calculations.

Thus also the _kingdom of China_ is designed by a square, with a vertical line drawn through the middle, in conformity perhaps with their ideas of the earth being a square, and China placed in its center; so far these may be considered as symbols of the objects intended to be represented. So, also, the numerals one, two, three, being designed by ? ? ?, would naturally suggest themselves as being fully as convenient for the purpose, and perhaps more so than any other; and where the first series of numerals ended, which according to the universal custom of counting by the fingers was at _ten_, the very act of placing the index of the right hand on the little finger of the left would suggest the form of the vertical cross ? as the symbol or representation of the number ten.

I cannot avoid taking notice in this place of a publication of Doctor Hager, which he calls an "_Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese_." In this work he has advanced a most extraordinary argument to prove an a.n.a.logy between the ancient Romans and the Chinese, from the resemblance which he has fancied to exist between the numeral characters and the numeral sounds made use of by those two nations. The Romans, he observes, expressed their numerals one, two, three, by a corresponding number of vertical strokes I. II. III. which the Chinese place horizontally ? ? ?. The Romans designed the number ten by an oblique cross X, and the Chinese by a vertical one ?. This resemblance in the forming of their numerals, so simple and natural that almost all nations have adopted it, is surely too slight a coincidence for concluding, that the people who use them must necessarily, at some period or other, have had communication together. The Doctor however seems to think so, and proceeds to observe, that the three princ.i.p.al Roman cyphers, I. V. X. or one, five and ten, are denoted in the Chinese language by the same sounds that they express in the Roman alphabet.

This remark, although ingenious, is not correct. _One_ and _five_, it is true, are expressed in the Chinese language by the _y_ and _ou_ of the French, which it may be presumed, were the sounds that the letters I.

and V. obtained in the ancient Roman alphabet; but with regard to the _ten_, or X, which, he says, the Chinese p.r.o.nounce _xe_, he is entirely mistaken, the Chinese word for _ten_ in Pekin being _shee_, and in Canton _shap_. This error the Doctor appears to have been led into by consulting some vocabulary in the Chinese and Portuguese languages; in the latter of which the letter X is p.r.o.nounced like our _sh_. But admitting, in its fullest extent, the resemblance of some of the numerals used by the two nations, in the shape of the character, and of others in the sound, it certainly cannot be a.s.sumed to prove any thing beyond a mere accidental coincidence.

The earliest accounts of China, after the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, being written by Portuguese missionaries, and the Chinese proper names still remaining to be spelt in the letters of that alphabet, have led several etymologists into great errors, not only with regard to the letter X, but more particularly in the _m_ final, and the _h_ incipient, the former being p.r.o.nounced _ng_, and the latter with a strong aspirate, as _sh_. Thus the name of the second Emperor of the present dynasty is almost universally written in Europe _Cam-hi_, whereas it is as universally p.r.o.nounced in China _Caung-shee_.

The learned Doctor seems to be still less happy in his next conjecture, where he observes that, as the Romans expressed their _five_ by simply dividing the X, or ten, so also the ancient character signifying _five_ with the Chinese was X or ten between two lines thus [Ill.u.s.tration]

indicating, as it were, that the number ten was divided in two; the Doctor seems to have forgotten that he has here placed his cross in the _Roman_ form, and not as the Chinese write it; and it is certainly a strange way of cutting a thing in two, by enclosing it between two lines; but the learned seldom baulk at an absurdity, when a system is to be established. The Chinese character for five is ?.

Of all deductions, those drawn from etymological comparisons are, perhaps, the most fallacious. Were these allowed to have any weight, the Chinese spoken language is of such a nature, that it would be no difficult task to point out its relationship to that of every nation upon earth. Being entirely monosyllabic, and each word ending in a vowel or a liquid, and being, at the same time, deprived of the sounds of several letters in our alphabet, it becomes necessarily incapable of supplying any great number of distinct syllables. Three hundred are, in fact, nearly as many as an European tongue can articulate, or ear distinguish. It follows, of course, that the same sound must have a great variety of significations. The syllable _ching_, for example, is actually expressed by fifty-one different characters, each having a different, unconnected, and opposite meaning; but it would be the height of absurdity to attempt to prove the coincidence of any other language with the Chinese, because it might happen to possess a word something like the sound of _ching_, which might also bear a signification not very different from one of those fifty-one that it held in the Chinese.

The Greek abounds with Chinese words. ????, a _dog_, is in Chinese both _keou_ and _keun_, expressive of the same animal; ??, _good_, is not very different from the Chinese _hau_, which signifies the same quality; and the article t? is not far remote from _ta_, _he_, or _that_. Both Greeks and Romans might recognise their first personal p.r.o.noun ??? or _ego_ in _go_, or as it is sometimes written _ngo_. The Italian affirmative _si_ is sufficiently near the Chinese _shee_, or _zee_, expressing a.s.sent. The French _etang_, and the Chinese _tang_, a pond or lake, are nearly the same, and their two negatives _pas_ and _poo_ are not very remote.

_Lex_, _loi_, _le_, _law_, compared with _leu_, _lee_, _laws_ and _inst.i.tutes_, are examples of a.n.a.logy that would be decisive to the etymological inquirer. The English word _mien_, the countenance, and the Chinese _mien_, expressing the same idea, are nothing different, and we might be supposed to have taken our _goose_ from their _goo_. To _sing_ is _chaung_, which comes very near our _chaunt_. The Chinese call a cat _miau_, and so does the Hottentot. The Malay word _to know_ is _tau_, and the Chinese monosyllable for the same verb is also _tau_, though in conversation they generally use the compound _tchee-tau_, each of which separately have nearly the same meaning. The Sumatrans have _mau_ for mother, the Chinese say _moo_. On grounds equally slight with these have many attempts been made to form conclusions from etymological comparisons. If I mistake not, the very ingenious Mr. Bryant makes the word _gate_ a derivative from the Indian word _ghaut_, a pa.s.s between mountains. Surely this is going a great deal too far for our little monosyllable. Might we not with as great a degree of propriety fetch our _shallow_ or _shoal_ from China, where _sha-loo_ signifies a flat sand, occasionally covered with the tide? A noted antiquarian has been led into some comical mistakes in his attempt to establish a resemblance between the Chinese and the Irish languages, frequently by his having considered the letters of the continental alphabets, in which the Chinese vocabulary he consulted was written, to be p.r.o.nounced in the same manner as his own[14].

[14] For the curiosity of those who may be inclined to speculate in etymological comparisons between the Chinese and other languages, I here subjoin a short list of words in the former, expressing some of the most striking objects in the creation, a few subjects of natural history, and of such articles as from their general use are familiar to most nations, these being of all others the most likely to have retained their primitive names. The orthography I have used is that of the English language.

The Earth _tee_ The Air _kee_ Fire _ho_ Water _swee_ The Sea _hai_ A River _ho_ A Lake _tang_ A Mountain _shan_ A Wilderness _ye-tee_ The Sun _jee-to_ The Moon _yue_ The Stars _sing_ The Clouds _yun_ Rain _yeu_ Hail _swee-tan_ Snow _swe_ Ice _ping_ Thunder _luie_ Lightning _shan-tien_ The Wind _fung_ The Day _jee_ or _tien_ The Night _ye_ or _van shang_ The Sky or Heaven _tien_ The East _tung_ The West _see_ The North _pee_ The South _nan_ Man _jin_ Woman _foo-jin_ A Quadruped _shoo_ A Bird _kin_ A Fish _eu_ An Insect _tchong_ A Plant _tsau_ A Tree _shoo_ A Fruit _ko-ste_ A Flower _wha_ A Stone _shee_ Gold _tchin_ Silver _in tse_ Copper _tung_ Lead _yuen_ Iron _tie_ The Head _too_ The Hand _shoo_ The Heart _sin_ The Leg _koo_ The Foot _tchiau_ The Face _mien_ The Eyes _yen-shing_ The Ears _cul-to_ The Hair _too fa_ An ox _nieu_ A Camel _loo-too_ A Horse _ma_ An a.s.s _loo-tse_ A Dog _kioon_ A Frog _tchoo_ A Sheep _yang_ A Goat, or mountain Sheep _shan-yang_ A Cat _miau_ A Stag _shan loo_ A Pidgeon _koo-tse_ Poultry _kee_ An Egg _kee-tan_ A Goose _goo_ Oil _yeo_ Rice _mee_ Milk _nai_ Vinegar _tsoo_ Tobacco _yen_ Salt _yen_ Silk _tsoo_ Cotton _mien-wha_ Flax Plant _ma_ Hemp _ma_ Wool (Sheep's Hair) _yangmau_ Coals _tan_ Sugar _tang_ Cheese, they have none but thick Milk _nai-ping_, or iced milk A House _shia_ A Temple _miau_ A Bed _tchuang_ A Door _men_ A Table _tai_ A Chair _ye-tze_ A Knife _tau_ A Pitcher _ping_ A Plough _lee_ An Anchor _mau_ A Ship _tchuan_ Money _tsien_

I must observe, however, for the information of these philologists, that scarcely two provinces in China have the same oral language. The officers and their attendants who came with us from the capital could converse only with the boatmen of the southern provinces, through the medium of an interpreter. The character of the language is universal, but the name or sound of the character is arbitrary. If a _convention of sounds_ could have been settled like a convention of marks, one would suppose that a commercial intercourse would have effected it, at least in the numeral sounds, that must necessarily be interchanged from place to place and myriads of times repeated from one corner of the empire to the other. Let us compare then the numerals of Pekin with those of Canton, the two greatest cities in China.

Pekin. Canton.

1. Ye yat 2. ul ye 3. san saam 4. soo see 5. ou um 6. leu lok 7. tchee tsat 8. pas pat 9. tcheu kow 10. shee shap 11. shee-ye shap-yat 12. shee-ul shap-ye 20. ul-shee ye-shap 30. san-shee saam-shap 31. san-shee-ye saam-shap-yat 32. san-shee-ul saam-shap-ye 100. pe paak 1000. tsien tseen 10,000. van man 100,000. she-van shap-man

If then, in this highly civilized empire, the oral language of the northern part differs so widely from the southern that, in numerous instances, by none of the etymological tricks[15] can they be brought to bear any kind of a.n.a.logy; if the very word which in Pekin implies the number _one_, be used in Canton to express _two_, how very absurd and ludicrous must these learned and laboured dissertations appear, that would a.s.sign an oriental origin to all our modern languages?

[15] Such as the addition, deduction, mutation, and transposition of letters, or even syllables. Thus Mr. Webbe thinks that the derivation of the Greek ???? _a woman_, from the Chinese _na-gin_, is self-evident.

Whatever degree of affinity may be discovered between the sounds of the Chinese language and those of other nations, their written character has no a.n.a.logy whatsoever, but is entirely peculiar to itself. Neither the Egyptian inscriptions, nor the nail-headed characters, or monograms, found on the Babylonian bricks, have any nearer resemblance to the Chinese than the Hebrew letters have to the Sanscrit; the only a.n.a.logy that can be said to exist between them is, that of their being composed of points and lines. Nor are any marks or traces of alphabetic writing discoverable in the composition of the Chinese character; and, if at any time, hieroglyphics have been employed to convey ideas, they have long given way to a collection of arbitrary signs settled by convention, and constructed on a system, as regular and constant as the formation of sounds in any of the European languages arises out of the alphabets of those languages.

The history of the world affords abundant evidence that, in the dawn of civilization, most nations endeavoured to fix and to perpetuate ideas by painting the figures of the objects that produced them. The Egyptian priesthood recorded the mysteries of their religion in graphic emblems of this kind; and the Mexicans, on the first arrival of the Spaniards, informed their prince Montezuma of what was pa.s.sing by painting their ideas on a roll of cloth. There is no way so natural as this of expressing, and conveying to the understanding of others, the images that pa.s.s in the mind, without the help of speech. In the course of the present voyage, an officer of artillery and myself were dispatched to make observations on the small island of _Collao_, near the coast of _Cochin-China_. In order to make the natives comprehend our desire to procure some poultry, we drew on paper the figure of a hen, and were immediately supplied to the extent of our wants. One of the inhabitants taking up the idea drew close behind the hen the figure of an egg, and a nod of the head obtained us as many as we had occasion for. The Bosjesmen Hottentots, the most wild and savage race perhaps of human beings, are in the constant habit of drawing, on the sides of caverns, the representations of the different animals peculiar to the country.

When I visited some of those caverns I considered such drawings as the employment of idle hours; but, on since reflecting that in almost all such caverns are also to be seen the figures of Dutch boors (who hunt these miserable creatures like wild beasts) in a variety of att.i.tudes, some with guns in their hands, and others in the act of firing upon their countrymen; waggons sometimes proceeding and at others standing still, the oxen unyoked, and the boors sleeping; and these representations generally followed by a number of lines scored like so many tallies; I am inclined to think they have adopted this method of informing their companions of the number of their enemies, and the magnitude of the danger. The animals represented were generally such as were to be met with in the district where the drawings appeared; this, to a people who subsist by the chace and by plunder, might serve as another piece of important information.

The Chinese history, although it takes notice of the time when they had no other method of keeping their records, except, like the Peruvians, by knotting cords, makes no mention of any hieroglyphical characters being used by them. If such were actually the case, the remains of symbolical writing would now be most discoverable in the radical, or elementary characters, of which we shall presently have occasion to speak, and especially in those which were employed to express some of the most remarkable objects in nature. Out of the two hundred and twelve, or thereabout, which const.i.tute the number of the radical signs, the following are a few of the most simple, in none of which, in my opinion, does there appear to be the least resemblance between the picture and the object.

? _gin_, man

? _koo_, a mouth

? _tee_, earth

? _tse_, a son

? _tsau_, a plant

? _shan_, a mountain

? _sin_, a heart

? _shoo_, a hand

? _fang_, s.p.a.ce, or a square of ground

? _yue_, the moon

? _jee_, the sun

? _moo_, a tree

? _swee_, water

? _ho_, fire

? _shee_, a stone.

The rest of the elementary characters are, if possible, still more unlike the objects they represent. There seems, therefore, to be no grounds for concluding that the Chinese ever made use of hieroglyphics or, more properly speaking, that their present character sprung out of hieroglyphics. They have a tradition, which is universally believed, that their prince _Fo-shee_ was the inventor of the system upon which their written character is formed, and which, without any material alteration, there is every reason to suppose has continued in use to this day. To _Fo-shee_, however, they ascribe the invention of almost every thing they know, which has led Mr. Baillie ingeniously to conjecture that _Fo-shee_ must have been some foreigner who first civilized China; as arts and sciences do not spring up and bear fruit in the life of one man. Many changes in the form of characters may have taken place from time to time, but the principle on which they are constructed seems to have maintained its ground. The redundancies of particular characters have been removed for the sake of convenience; and the learned in their epistolary writing have adopted a sort of running hand, in which the form is so very materially altered, by rounding off the angles, connecting some parts and wholly omitting others, as to make it appear to a superficial observer a totally different language. But I may venture to observe, that it has not only not undergone any material alteration for more than two thousand years, but that it has never borrowed a _character_, or a syllable, from any other language that now exists. As a proof of this, it may be mentioned, that every new article that has found its way into China since its discovery to Europeans has acquired a Chinese name, and entirely sunk that which it bore by the nation who introduced it. The proper names even of countries, nations, and individuals are changed, and a.s.sume new ones in their language. Thus Europe is called _See-yang_, the western country; j.a.pan _Tung-yang_, the eastern country; India _Siau-see-yang_, the little western country. The English are dignified by the name of _Hung-mou_, or _Red-heads_, and the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and others, who visit China, have each a name in the language of the country totally distinct from that they bear in Europe. This inflexibility in retaining the words of their own poor language has frequently made me think, that Doctor Johnson had the Chinese in his mind when, in that inimitable piece of fine writing which prefaces his dictionary, he made this remark: "The language most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life."

The invention of the Chinese character, although an effort of genius, required far less powers of the mind than the discovery of an alphabet; a discovery so sublime that, according to the opinion of some, nothing less than a divine origin ought to be ascribed to it. It may, however, be considered as the nearest approximation to an universal character that has. .h.i.therto been attempted by the learned and ingenious of any nation; each character conveying at once to the eye, not only simple, but the most combined ideas. The plan of our countryman, Bishop Wilkins, for establishing an universal character is, in all respects, so similar to that upon which the Chinese language is constructed, that a reference to the former will be found to convey a very competent idea of the nature of the latter. The universal character of our countryman is, however, more systematic, and more philosophical, than the plan of the Chinese character.

Certain signs expressing simple objects or ideas may be considered as the roots or primitives of this language. These are few in number, not exceeding two hundred and twelve, one of which, or its abbreviation, will be found to compose a part of every character in the language; and may, therefore, be considered as the _key_ to the character into which it enters. The eye soon becomes accustomed to fix upon the particular key, or root, of the most complicated characters, in some of which are not fewer than sixty or seventy distinct lines and points. The right line, the curved line, and a point are the rudiments of all the characters. These, variously combined with one another, have been extended from time to time, as occasion might require, to nearly eighty thousand different characters.

To explain the manner in which their dictionaries are arranged will serve to convey a correct notion of the nature of this extraordinary language. All the two hundred and twelve roots or keys are drawn fair and distinct on the head of the page, beginning with the most simple, or that which contains the fewest number of lines or points, and proceeding to the most complicated; and on the margins of the page are marked the numeral characters one, two, three, &c. which signify, that the _root_ or _key_ at the top will be found to be combined on that page with one, two, three, &c. lines or points. Suppose, for example, a learner should meet with an unknown character, in which he perceives that the simple sign expressing _water_ is the _key_ or _root_, and that it contains, besides this root, _six_ additional points and lines. He immediately turns over his dictionary to the place where the character _water_ stands on the top of the page, and proceeding with his eye directed to the margin, until the numeral character _six_ occurs, he will soon perceive the one in question; for all the characters in the language, belonging to the _root water_, and composed of _six_ other lines and points, will follow successively in this place. The name or sound of the character is placed immediately after it, expressed in such others as are supposed to be most familiar; and, in the method made use of for conveying this information, the Chinese have discovered some faint and very imperfect idea of alphabetic writing, by splitting the monosyllabic sound into a dissyllable, and again compressing the dissyllable into a simple sound. One instance will serve to explain this method. Suppose the name of the character under consideration to be _ping_. If no single character be thought sufficiently simple to express the sound _ping_, immediately after it will be placed two well-known characters _pe_ and _ing_; but, as every character in the language has a monosyllabic sound, it will readily be concluded, that _pe_ and _ing_, when compressed into one syllable, must be p.r.o.nounced _ping_. After these, the meaning or explanation follows, in the clearest and most easy characters that can be employed.

When, indeed, a considerable progress has been made in the language, the general meaning of many of the characters may be pretty nearly guessed at by the eye alone, as they will mostly be found to have some reference, either immediate or remote, though very often in a figurative sense, to the signification of the _key_ or _root_; in the same manner as in the cla.s.sification of objects in natural history, every species may be referred to its proper genus. The signs, for instance, expressing the _hand_ and the _heart_, are two _roots_, and all the works of art, the different trades and manufactures, arrange themselves under the first, and all the pa.s.sions, affections, and sentiments of the mind under the latter. The root of an _unit_ or _one_ comprehends all the characters expressive of unity, concord, harmony, and the like. Thus, if I observe a character compounded of the two simple _roots_, _one_ and _heart_, I have no difficulty in concluding that its signification is _unanimity_, but, if the sign of a _negative_ should also appear in the same character, the meaning will be reversed to _discord_ or _dissention_, literally _not one heart_. Many proper names of persons have the character signifying _man_ for their key or root, and all foreign names have the character _mouth_ or _voice_ annexed, which shews at once that the character is a proper name employed only to express sound without any particular meaning.

Nor are these keys or roots, although sometimes placed on the right of the character, sometimes on the left, now at the top, and then at the bottom, so very difficult to be discovered to a person who knows but a little of the language, as Doctor Hager has imagined. This is by far the easiest part of the language. The abbreviations in the compound characters, and the figurative sense in which they are sometimes used, const.i.tute the difficulty, by the obscurity in which they are involved, and the ambiguity to which they are liable.

The Doctor is equally unfortunate in the discovery which he thinks he has made of a want of order in cla.s.sing the elements according to the number of lines they contain. The instances he gives of such anomaly are in the two characters of ? _moo_, mother; and ? _tien_, cultivated ground: the first of which he is surprised to find among the elementary characters of _four_ lines, and the latter (which he a.s.serts to be still more simple) among those of _five_. The Chinese, however, are not quite so much out of order as the Doctor seems to be out of his province in attempting a critique on a language, of which he really possesses a very superficial knowledge. The first character ? _moo_ is composed of [Ill.u.s.tration: strokes] and the second ? _tien_ of [Ill.u.s.tration: strokes]; the one of four and the other of five lines according to the arrangement of Chinese dictionaries, and their elementary treatises.

Among the roots or primitives that most frequently occur are those expressing the _hand_, _heart_, _mouth_, and the five elements, _earth_, _air_, _fire_, _wood_, and _water_. _Man_ is also a very common root.

The composition of characters is capable of exercising a very considerable degree of ingenuity, and the a.n.a.lysis of them is extremely entertaining to a foreigner. As in a proposition of Euclid it is necessary to go through the whole demonstration before the figure to which it refers can be properly understood, so, in the Chinese character, the sense of the several component parts must first be known in order to comprehend the meaning of the compound. To endeavour to recollect them without this knowledge would be a laborious and almost impossible effort of the mind. Indeed, after this knowledge is acquired, the sense is sometimes so hid in metaphor, and in allusions to particular customs or ways of thinking, that when all the component parts of a character are well understood, the meaning may yet remain in obscurity. It may not be difficult to conceive, for instance, that in a figurative language, the union of the _sun_ and _moon_ might be employed to express any extraordinary degree of _light_ or _brilliancy_; but it would not so readily occur, that the character _foo_ or _happiness_, or _supreme felicity_, should be designed by the union of the characters expressing a spirit or demon, the number _one_ or _unity_, a _mouth_, and a piece of _cultivated ground_, thus ?.

This character in the Chinese language is meant to convey the same idea as the word _comfort_ does in our own. The character implying the _middle_ of any thing, annexed to that of _heart_, was not inaptly employed to express _a very dear friend_, nor that with the _heart_ surmounted by a _negative_, to imply _indifference_, _no heart_; but it is not so easy to a.s.sign any reason why the character _ping_, signifying rank or order, should be expressed by the character _mouth_, repeated thrice, and placed like the three b.a.l.l.s of a p.a.w.nbroker, thus ?, or why four of these mouths arranged as under, with the character _ta_, _great_, in the center, should imply an instrument, or piece of mechanism. ?. Nor would it readily occur why the character ? _nan_, _masculine_, should be made up of _tien_, a _field_, and _lee_, _strength_, unless from the idea that the _male s.e.x_ possesses _strength_, and only can inherit _land_. But that a _smoothness_ or _volubility_ of _speech_ ? should be designed by _koo_, _mouth_, and _kin_, _gold_, we can more easily conceive, as we apply the epithet _silver tongue_ pretty nearly on the same occasion.