Most of us remember how the prolix sage Imlao, in Rasselas, convinces the unfortunate Prince of Abyssinia that no man can hope to be a post. So much has to be learned and investigated, such depths of human passion have to be sounded, and such a wide area of observation has to be scanned, involving "all that is awfully vast or elegantly little" that the pupil gives up his hopes of shining in poesy and concludes that no mortal man can expect to answer the Sage's requirements, For many years a large section of the human' race held the same opinions with regard to the Chinese language. Tt seemed to present an obstacle which it was impossible, or next to impossible, to surmount, The intricacy and variety of the written character, the astounding difficulty of the tones, and the number of dialects, rendered it apparently hopeless to become a sinologue. The labours of recent years, however, have tended to alter this impression. So many valuable helps towards the acquirement of Chinese have been produced, and so much care and pains Lave been bestowed on the subject, that the mysterious Janguage, so long regarded as a sealed book to the foreigner, has been gradually removed from the region of the unknowable, and is now regarded as a tongue which time, patience, a good master, and the Tzu-erh-chi, enable a resolute student to spank and to read, if not to master. It is discouraging to have this opinion shattered, and to read a paper in a learned journal which fills us with the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.