15th Jan, Tue inaugural lecture of the school for modern oriental studies established by the Imperial Institute in connection with University College and King's College, London, was delivered by Professor Douglas on the 13th October last, and has just been published in pamphlet form under the title of "China and the language of China." Most of the information conveyed by it must have been already familiar to his audience, for books on China multiply apace, but the Professor's statement of the origin and object of the new course of lectures would have interested them hardly less than it will his readers here. Put briefly, the argument was this. British trade with China is not only Jess than it was, but bears an ever decreasing ratio to Chinese trade with the rest of Europe. Why? Because, says Professor Douglas, our Continental rivals have bestirred themselves to acquire a practical knowledge of the Chinese language. We, therefore, must do the same, and in order that we may do it these lectures have been started by our new Imperial Institute. Come, then, budding chanszees, silkman in posse, and Jeatn the rudiments of the Chinese tongue before you leave for China, Let us, however, examine Professor Douglas' argument more at leisure. The open ports, he says, "are not made starting points from which to enrich our mercantile knowledge of the surrounding districts. Our merchants con; at the ports and trouble very little about their environment. It would no any great risk to wager that not more {than one or two out of every hundred of our merchants in China, would be able to name the eighteen provinces of the Empire, and certainly the proportion is not larger of those who can speak intelligibly half a dozen sentences of language." He then quotes Dr. Williams on the condition of things prior to 1840, when the entire ignor rance of foreign traders of the spoken and written language of China brought them into contempt with all classes,' and when all intercourse was carried on in a jargon which each patty despised.' This, he says, " unfortunatel applies equally to-day to the Britis mercantile communities. It is deplorable to think that men should live ten, fifteen, and twenty years in a country without learning even enough of the language of the natives to converse with them. How should we regard the settlement on our shores of communities of foreign merchants, who lived apart, made no attempt to learn our language, and conversed only with those of their underlings who could talk a broken jargon vaguely related to the language of the settlers? They would be regarded as outer strangers, and if in any outbreak of fanaticism they were attacked and their goods despoiled they would get little sympathy from the people at large. Such is precisely the position of our merchants with regard to the Chinese. No one who has lived in any country abroad can have failed confidence and hospitality ofthe natives to experience what a passport to the
of the country is a knowledge of their language, and yet our merchants in China make no attempt to avail them: selves of this very direct way to the friendship and the fellowship of the people. It has always been their custom to depend on their pidgin' English speaking compradores and servants in their intercourse with the natives and they find it difficult to break through their habit." We cannot help feeling that the Professor, in his very praiseworthy desire to justify his existence as a Lecturer of the Institute, somewhat exaggerates the evils of the existing system. If foreigners in China have lived apart' from the natives, whose fault is that? Would there be any greater personal intimacy between thetwoclasses, if the visitors had set themselves to learn the language of their very inhospitable hosts? Meanwhile has not pidgin' fulfilled its purpose well enough on the whole? Our merchants are not theory ists, but eminently practical. They have long been ina position to decide whether it was better to knock along" with pidgin', a jargon any Englishman can acquire in a week, or to spend mouths, indeed years, in mastering the most heartbreaking language ever written by man, before they entered on transactions, important enough in themselves doubtless, but requiring for the most part a vocabulary limited to a hundred words or so. Where they have
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.