observed that the meaning of the key governs the sense of the character. If this was found invariably to be the case, the Chinese might truly be considered as a philosophical language; as one that approached more nearly than any attempt hitherto made, to an 'Universal Character,'-in fact, as the only practical system of pasigraphy that promised success. The principle of the structure is, indeed, admirable; but the plan has been sadly marred in the execution. In the first place the greater number of the keys have been ill chosen to represent the roots or indices under which corresponding ideas ought to be classed. They are not such as are suited for a generalization of objects or ideas; such as ought to embrace the grand features of nature, whether animate or inanimate; to represent the leading qualities and circumstances, the actions, passions and affections, so as to shew at a glance the general character of the picture employed-we call it picture, because there are some grounds to believe that in the origin of the language each character was a rude representation of the object intended to be represented. It is however no longer the picture-language of the ancient Egyptians and the Mexicans. Père Amiot, in his letter from Pekin to the Royal Society of London, brings forward a number of ancient characters where the object intended to be expressed is evidently attempted to be represented; as well as some others still in use, in which he thinks the object may yet be traced,—for instance in a man, thus though the legs only remain. A river, he

2

thinks, may still be recognised in, and fire in 》》》》, the one being intended to represent waves and the other sparks. The sun he says was once O, but has been changed, for the sake of

convenience, to; and the moon, which once was

Something too resembling the object is fancied in

D to A.

a bow,

but more distinctly seen in, a cultivated field; in

and in

ť

to shoot with an arrow. Faint as these resemblances

are, they are but few in number, and lead not to any effectual purpose for understanding the language. We shall do much better to consider all the characters as composed of certain conventional marks, out of which 214 have been selected as so many genera,

and

and under which all our ideas are to be arranged and classified, forming so many species belonging to each genus.

That the genera are ill-chosen will at once be seen, when we mention that the nose, the teeth, old age, obedience, hemp, salt, vases, the face, the voice, the bones, a dragon, a tiger, a tortoise, and many others equally incapable of generalization, are among the number. There are seven or eight different keys to represent the act of walking: the numeral eight is a key, under which is arranged the numeral six. About two-thirds of the keys being the representatives of such limited and individual objects, it is obvious that the language must be imperfect, uncertain, and obscure: where the keys are well chosen, the signification of almost every character governed by them has a direct affinity with the meaning of its key. Thus under the heart, all the characters will be found to express some passion, sentiment, or affection of the mind, as love, hatred, joy, grief, fear, courage, malice, &c.; under trees or wood, all manner of buildings, ships, machines, and implements made of wood, as well as all trees of every kind for use or ornament; under water, all that relate to seas, rivers, lakes, ponds, canals, &c. and also to rain, dews, liquors, and all humid substances.

In the next place, the characters connected with the keys appear for the most part to have been ill selected; so that no human ingenuity can trace the connection between the species and the genus. We shall first give a few specimens where the direct and palpable meaning from the connection is obviously pointed out; then of those whose signification is as obviously metaphorical, and lastly, a few of those bungling specimens of composition, where the author could have possessed no feeling or conception of the beauty and accuracy of expression of which his materials were capable.

1st, Those of obvious signification. E

, ouang, a sheet of

deep water, is composed of water and majestic:

A, tcheu, a prison, a man in a square, a person shut up within four walls. Water and mother, the sea, the nother of all waters. Mouth combined with great, makes uproar, noise. Man added to great, makes a great man, a man in power. A tree and great, a great tree growing alone. Good with word, is praise. Tears are expressed by water and eye.

The repetition of a character denotes plurality, as, man,

★★, a multitude; thus, to signifies many; to to, all; moo, a

tree; repeated, a thicket; thrice repeated, a forest.

2dly, Those characters used metaphorically are much more numerous. In this way we should suppose the number, where the allusion is pretty obvious from the separate signification of the component parts, may perhaps amount to about one-fifth part of the language. Of these the following are a few examples:

, chong, faithful, a man and word; fire and water express

,

calamity; fire and sword, the same; and, what is singular enough, the broken reed, from which we, and the Latins, &c. before us, took the idea, is, with the Chinese also, expressive of misfortune and calamity; probably from the very extensive use of the arundo bamboo.

閱

a heart and door, grief, oppression;

an ear and door, to listen; a heart and slave signify wrath, wrangling, contention; a heart and knife, affliction; a heart under the point of a sword, patience; a heart and middle, fidelity; a heart and field, meditation; words and fine or grand, deceit; heart, truth, and words, sincerity; a bargain or contract is a word and a nail; a kingdom is a mouth and warlike instruments within a square, arms and counsel being the best protection of a state; mouth and ten make antiquity, to which, if words be added, the character implies the doctrine of the ancients. Time, twice repeated, is eternity.

Some of the allusions though local and peculiar, may yet be explained; as, for instance, the character woman, combined with that of son, signifies good, agreeable, because it denotes affection, and because the want of children is considered as a reproach. A second, or assistant wife, (called by the missionaries a concubine,) is denoted by woman and honour or exaltation. The character of woman repeated is strife; thrice repeated, inordinate desire, falsehood. Quiet, silence, are expressed by woman and the inner apartment of the house. A spinning wheel is composed of the wheel of a carriage and royal, being an allusion to the wife of Hoang-tie, the inventor of spinning silk. A king within a door or gateway is the character expressing the intercalary moon, because on this occasion the king or chief came and stood in the door. A mouth, added to a sage or learned man, expresses virtue, happiness, gain, because the words of a sage lead to those results. In these allusions the language may certainly be considered as characteristic of the nation. We observe, for instance, that the combination of the character woman is almost universally employed sarcastically or in a bad sense, which is perfectly consistent with a people among whom females are held in little consideration; thus, slavery, wrath, contention, deceit, falsehood, are all arranged under the key for woman; quiet, ease, rest,

is a woman shut up, and happiness, comfort, &c. is expressed by a woman under a roof or cover, which can only mean the grave, over which a roof is generally built.

3dly, This class, of which Europeans can trace no relation between the meaning of the separate parts and the whole, composes the great mass of Chinese characters, of which we shall give a few examples.

A heart under the character heaven, thus ,signifies shame,

dishonour. Moon repeated is a friend or companion, perhaps one of two months acquaintance; a hand combined with the sun is to dig the earth; with the moon, to open, to break. The

key water joined to the key or character woman, thus

少女, is

the personal pronoun thou or ye. The key wood or tree above the

key or character mouth, thus

mouth, thus

thus

束

呆

木

, is an apricot, but under the

a stupid ignorant fellow; and through the mouth,

it signifies to bind, to stop, the number ten, &c. The

key wood, before the character west, is the sleep of birds, rest in general; but under the character west, is a chesnut tree, and also to

be afraid. By what possible combination of circumstances or al

lusion the key horse and the numeral ten, thus

made to express a one-year old horse, would probably puzzle a Chinese to explain. We shall mention but one more: the key which signifies a tortoise, of sixteen' traits,' joined to another character composed of forty-eight, making altogether sixty-four strokes, is employed to express a talkative person.

This almost general deviation from the principle on which the language was originally formed, would induce us to conclude that these characters were never meant for the Chinese; but that they had received them from a people more ancient than themselves, and in fitting them to their monosyllables, had wholly misapplied them. It was the opinion of M. Bailly and the Abbé Roussier,

For a more detailed account of the construction of this singular language, we must refer our readers to Art. I. No. VI. of the Quarterly Review.

after

after the long and elaborate researches made by the one into their astronomy, and by the other into their musical science, that the Chinese were themselves the remains of some ancient and civilized nation, who had preserved the fragments of a true system, without preserving the principles on which it had been grounded; a conjecture which, if admitted, would at once account for the non-progressive state of the sciences for so many ages.

The characters must, we think, originally have belonged to a polysyllabic language, each component part of every character being a significant syllable. This is far from being the case as we now find them. The separate parts, as we have observed, have not in a great majority of the characters the least affinity to the signification of the compound; and, in general, the name of the compound character, which is invariably a monosyllable, has no relation to any one of the names of the several parts of which it is

compounded. For instance, we find no trace of

to , yao, obA scurity, in, moo, a tree, or je, the sun, whose combination would naturally have suggested moo-je; nor can it be conceived by what possible association of ideas je, the sun, and yué, the moon, when combined, should have been called ming; there not being a single letter in ming common to either of the other. Ming is a syllabic sound that might have existed in their spoken language before the introduction of any written character, expressive of brilliancy and splendour; and in fitting the compounded character of the sun and the moou to this old monosyllable, they followed the dictates of common sense: but this is rarely the case; for in general we meet with associations which chance or caprice only could have formed. We believe that there is no instance of the Chinese having created a new word; but new characters are added to the language every year; hence it necessarily follows that old names must be given to them, and hence the want of connection between the sound and the meaning of the new character, or any of its parts. In fact, we can conceive nothing either in art or nature so perfectly discordant and ill-suited to one another, as the written and spoken languages of China. Most certainly they were never meant to be brought together, or to be made use of by one and the same people. Whence they had these characters, or what circumstances led to the adoption of them, their history does not say, though we believe there are numerous volumes in their language which treat on the origin of them. We pretend not to be prepared for such deep research; but we would recommend it to the new professor of the Chinese language at Paris,

who