lowers of Taou; while the charms and prayers of the Buddhist sect, fill numerous cases in all the temples of Fŭh, and find their way, by gratuitous distribution, into the hands of millions. Plays and novels, with works of a light and questionable character, are still more extensively multiplied, and actually deluge the land. A Chinese bookseller issues his catalogue in the same way with our English bibliopolists, and in the number of works, with the cheapness of the prices, would vie with any advertisers on this side the globe. Many of their publications amount to two hundred and fifty or three hundred volumes; and one has been met with amounting to three thousand volumes, indicative either of the abundance of their matter, or their tedious prolixity.
We have hitherto alluded principally to the Chinese characters, and the method they have adopted of transmitting and perpetuating their ideas. We shall now treat of their spoken language; not that writing preceded speaking, but because the written character constitutes the universal medium, and has been, for centuries, unchanged; while spoken sounds vary in every province of the empire, and through each succeeding age. It is scarcely possible to ascertain the original sounds of the letters, in alphabetic languages, where the arbitrary marks are few; and how much less can the enunciations appropriated to several thousand characters be retained unimpaired for successive ages among hundreds of millions of people. The written medium, therefore, must be looked upon as the most stable part of the language; while their vocal communications come next into consideration.
The Chinese language is monosyllabic, inasmuch
