OF THE CHARACTERS.

THE CHARACTERS of the Chinese Language demand our first attention, as they form the most important part of a language which speaks to the eye rather than to the ear; and which, though rich and copious in a high degree, as it relates to the Characters, is poor beyond any other language, if we regard merely its enunciated Sounds. The former might indeed, without any degree of violence, be separated from the latter, and clothed in the variegated enunciation of the West to the highest advantage.

These characters answer properly to the (written) words which compose other languages: no one of them forms a proposition; no one includes within itself the force of a noun and a verb, of a substantive and its adjunct, or an action and its object, in any other way than compound words in the Greek and the Sungskrit languages. However complicated any character may appear, still the compound, though it embrace six or seven characters, like compounds in Greek and Sungskrit, expresses only one idea, and still remains a substantive, an adjective, a verb, &c. as capable of union with other characters as the simplest character in the language. Nor is any difference of gender, number, or case, in the nouns; or of mood, tense, or person, in the verbs, expressed by any alteration in the character: these are all either inferred from the connection, or expressed, as in English, by certain auxiliary characters.

THE specific difference then between the Chinese and other languages,* lies wholly in the principle on which the characters or words are formed: these being formed in the latter by the union of the Letters of the Alphabet, in the former by the union of certain Elementary Characters intended to represent the principal objects of sense.

BEFORE we enter further on this subject, it may not be improper to premise, that if, as is affirmed by the author of the " Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar," the truth be, "that every medium through which we exhibit any thing to another's contemplation, is either derived from natural attributes (or objects) and is then an Imitation; or else from accidents quite arbitrary, and is then a Symbol ;"+ while written words are necessarily arbitrary Symbols, (since the words Mountain and River exhibit to the mind no idea of these two objects except by arbitrary association,) it will follow, that characters intended as IMITATIONS of natural objects, faint and rude as the resemblance may be, are capable of forming the basis of another mode of communicating ideas, totally different, it is true, from the Alphabetic, but perhaps not less congruous with the nature of things. This at once describes and defines the Chinese Characters. They are, this "other

* It may be proper to observe here, that, throughout this work, the term language, when applied to the Chinese, refers to the Characters, rather than to the Sounds; to which the term most properly applies; the former, on the most accurate computation, out-numbering the latter, by nearly ten to one.,

+ See Harris's Hermes, page 330.

In the former edition, the alphabetic mode of writing was denominated the Symbolic, while the Chinese was termed the Imitative. But as all the Chinese characters beside the Elements, must necessarily be Symbols as really as written words, since they signify by compact or agreement certain ideas, the term "Symbolic," being in a certain degree common to both systems, seemed unfit to designate either. In this edition, therefore, both systems are designated from that which constitutes the basis of each, the Western system being termed the Alphabe tic, and the Chinese the Imitative.

mode" alluded to by HARRIS, namely, IMITATIONS of certain natural objects, combined in a variety of forms, in order to exhibit things and ideas" to the contemplation of others."

OF THE ELEMENTS.

AMONG the Chinese Characters, those which are generally styled the ELEMENTS, have the first claim on our attention. These are in number, Two Hundred and Fourteen, and consist of strong linear and angular strokes, which advance in number from one to fifty-two, and include every variety with respect to length, from the simple apex, to the longest oblique stroke, as well as that variety of position, which results from the oblique, the horizontal, and the perpendicular. It is, however, worthy of remark, that circular forms are excluded. Whatever of this nature appears in any character, is merely fancy and embellishment, and no way essential to the meaning of the character. Nor does the thickness or fineness of the stroke alter the meaning, any further than as indicating, in certain cases, whether the stroke has been struck upwards or downwards: that circumstance, in several instances, forming the specific difference between two characters apparently alike in form. The Elements follow in the order they preserve in the Imperial Dictionary.