Tus difference between the Chinese and Japanese at the present time is plainly seen in their attitude in regard to foreign manners and habits, The Japanese are rapidly changing their costume and they have adopted a code of laws based on European legislation. They are also making great efforts to Romanise their writing and dismiss Chinese tradition from their schools. The Chinese are not at all likely to change their costume or their laws. Nor will they abandon their mode of writing. They are on the way to school improvements, and science will soon force an entrance into the literary examinations, Chere is a rumour that the Emperor is himself fond of mathematics and astronomy. It is likely that the new College at Tientsin erected by the Viceroy of Chihli for the scientific education of youth will be open to receive pupils in the Spring of 1890. But while the Chinese will learn science they will not for a long time to come abandon their mode of writing as the Japanese many of them would like todo. Western science is coming more to the front than it was and to know it is a necessity, but the Chinese will not tire of their own language. Many of them now learn English and afterwards they can if they choose acquire a competent knowledge of science from reading western text books. Nor will science remain shut up in European modes of speech. The Chinese language as the natives use it has great force, fluency, and direction. It is practical as the nation is practical, and these who use it are too independent to abandon the speech and writing handed down to them through so long a line of ancestors. It will be made the medium of instruction in science and is very suitable for becoming so. They have contractions for all their characters which foreign students do not trouble themselves to learn, but the use of which in fact qualifies the Chinese to become short-hand reporters of speeches in their own language. hey do not practise speech making, but if they did and if the native newspapers formed a staff of short-hand reporters they would not need to learn any foreign system. They can report quite fast enough themselves with a little practice and they write the contractions with wonderful quickness. Their hand muscles are pliable, their fingers small, and the writing brash they employ is as an instrument superior in speed to the steel pen or the quill. he scribes at an imperial audience probably write all or nearly all that is said. Scribes who are paid by the piece get through a large amount of copying in a very short time. Yet let no one expect a teacher who is paid by the month to write fast. He has every reason to be slow. But copyists paid so much for a thousand characters try naturally to transcribe as many thousand ina week as they can. The rapid work of such copyists, especially if they are allowed to use contractions, favours the conclusion that by using Chinese characters specialists could easily write all that a good speaker says. As to when ther they could compete with the quickest European stenographers may perhaps soon be brought toa trial in Japan, where many thousands are now learning to write in the Roman character. The new school will soon proceed to add shorthand to Romanisation and then it will soon be decided which is the best adapted for swift and accurate reporting.
The Chinese character is at present used in China, Japan, Corea and Cochin China. In these countries the educated class express their ideas in this form. Whence did it come? Is it a purely native invention or is it of foreign origin Let it be remembered that the old writing of China before the seal character was invented about B.C. 800 was called the tadpole writing from the stroke being round and thick at one end and pointed at the other. Attention was drawn to it by Kung-an-kuo a great scholar in the second century before Christ. It was on occasion of the discovery of a valuable collection of books in the house of Confucius about B.C. 150. The prince of Lu had ordered the house to be taken down, and in secret repositories in the walls several separate and complete classical works were found and entrusted to Kung-an-kuo who was head of the Confucian family at that time. In Legge's Classics in the Prolegomena to the Discourses of Confucius and to the Book of History this fortunate discovery is described. The writing looked strange because it had gone out of use. The Revolution of B.C. 220 had among the many great changes then made altered the writing too. The Han scholars therefore adopted the name K'o-tou "tadpole" to denote the strange old writing which had been common four centuries before. What is seen in native books now is the seal character. The ancient mode of writing which Confucius used, presenting to the eye a grouping of strokes thick at the beginning and finishing with a point, the true Koo-wen, is not represented in books. If it were present to the eye the Babylonian origin of the Chinese writing would at once be obvious, What the Han scholars called tadpole shaped, we may call cuneiform writing, applied to the Chinese.
But it may be objected that the K'o-tou writing common in the time of Confucius was not the ancient writing seen on bells, vases and other antiquities. To this it may be replied that the Babylonians had a pre-cuneiform writing as well as the cuneiform itself, It was toa large extent ideographic and possibly the earliest Chinese writing may have been founded on the older Babylonian writing, as the tadpole script was on the new style known as the cuneiform. That the old Chinese writing seen on bells and vases was a foreign invention is probable because it is connected with an advanced knowledge of astronomy, 'That the mode of writing with which Confucius was fa-millar' was the latter Babylonian is very likely, because the Chinese had in his day already begun to write numbers from left to right with strokes in the Babylonian way precisely. For example would at that time have been understood to be 6 42 1 8, both at Babylon and in China. In China this mode of writing numbers has been kept up till the present time as supplemental to the ten characters in ordinary use.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.