We have great respect for the author of "China's Place in Philology," and gladly inserted his remarks in reply to our review, published in our issue, of the 6th July. Open discussion upon such topics, when conducted with becoming spirit, cannot fail to throw light on a subject so little opened up as the history of the Chinese language, and we therefore assure Mr. Edkins that, however he may have felt onthe subject, we really meant those remarks to be purely critical. The author has, however, written in "self-defence," and in self-defence has thought fit to carry the war into the enemy's camp. Such a mode of conducting discussion is of course perfectly fair, though sometimes dangerous to the party making use of it, Three errors, or apparent errors, of ours have struck the author, and these, though having little to say to the main argument, are hurled against us with a vehemence becoming the Rupert of Debate." Our errors were, that we put down the date 800 B. C, for the probable introduction of writing, and the revival of learning in the Han for the introduction of the present system; that we committed ourselves to a false statement about the external history of the Book of Poetry, and that we were ignorant of what we really thought every tyro in Chinese was aware of, the recent origin of the present form of the mandarin, Now with regard to the first, we are as well entitled to our opinion, founded on different course of reasoning from Mr.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.