the Editor of the Noara-Cuma Dany News.
Si,—I have lately read, with considerable interest, Mr. Kingsmill's very able and exhaustive paper on the Ancient Language and Cult of the Chows, part of which is devoted to a skilful attack upon the hitherto universal rendering of FE-F- as Son of Heaven, It is nothing to Mr. Kingsmill that all' the best Chinese authorities unite in assuring us that FOF moans, and is, nothing else than FR FRY 5o,-F; that this la the construction put upon it in all the dictionaries; and that every Chinaman in the Empire understands and uses it in this sense. Ho insists that because, in the colloquial idiom, IS-F means an officer, not the son of an officer, and, say, means a cap, and not the son of a cap, it is therefore contrary to the genius of the language to translate KF as the Chinese say it ought to be translated. I beg to submit that however true this may be of colloquialisms, 7 -F- is a classic phrase, in spite of its constant employment; and that the rules which apply to one form of are by no means applicable to the other. It is when Mr. Kingsmill attempts to prove his case by quoting from the Shu
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.