The next modification, imparting a more cursive manner to the style of Li-see, approaches the modern writing of the country, and is called "Li," or "of the offices," being, in fact, the government hand. It is occasionally used, however, in prefaces to books, when ornamental variety is sought. In the next period, the cursive character of all the signs is so much increased that the number of ligatures render it exceedingly difficult to read; it is the style usually found on sticks of Chinese ink, fans, &c., and is said to have been invented, or rather developed, about the first century of the Christian era. Many other styles have since been adopted, and partially abandoned; and the "Eulogy of the town of Moukden" is cited in M. Sylvester's great work as containing examples of many of them, being written in thirty-two different kinds of characters. The order of Chinese writing is from right to left, generally in columns ; the characters or groups which express a word or a phrase being placed one beneath the other, beginning at the right-hand column at the top, and reading down each in succession to the bottom of the left column. When the Chinese writing is placed in a horizontal line, as in names, &c., over a door, it is read directly from right to left. Chinese words are arranged in their modern dictionaries by several methods of classification, one of which is the number of strokes of the pencil required to make each character; as, 龠 แ Yo, a wind instrument, a letter of thirteen strokes. The Chinese distinguish their most cursive style as the "running-hand;" one rather less so is termed the "walking-hand;" a third is known as the grass-hand," &c.; all terms very characteristic of the respective styles. Though this people never carried the art of writing to its legitimate development in the creation of a perfect phonetic alphabet, they yet preceded all other nations in the discovery of a mode of rapidly multiplying writings by means of printing, an art which was first practised by Fung-taou as early as the tenth century of our era, above four hundred years before its invention in * Europe. The first efforts were made by engraving the letters in intaglio in wood blocks, and then inking all the remaining surface, by which means the letters, when an impression was taken, remained white upon a black ground; but they soon afterwards invented a method of cutting them in relief, and producing the letter in black, as in European printing. Fung-taou is still worshipped by the Chinese type-cutters as their patron deity. Beyond the last-named step the Chinese never advanced; and they still print each page of a book from an entire block cut for the occasion, having no idea of our system of moveable types. In Europe we also began by wood blocks upon the system just described; and many books printed by that process, now known as "block-books" by collectors, still exist. But our after-steps were of a more progressive character than those of the Chinese; and this first crude effort soon pointed the way to the glorious invention of our present system of printing with separate types. Before the use of paper, which the Chinese discovered about the end of the first century of our era, they wrote on thin boards, or bamboos pared thin; their next step being the use of silk or some other woven fabric for writing purposes. * They probably had a kind of printing even of a much earlier period, which is possibly that which Gibbon alludes to as being practised in the 6th century, A.D., in the reign of Justinian, when he takes occasion to regret, that, instead of introducing the silk manufacture from China, that prince did not introduce the art of printing. F 34 CHAPTER V. แ HE examination of the Mexican system of writing, by means of pictorial THE signs, has exhibited to us that stage of the art in its rudest and most primitive form. Our subsequent review of Chinese writing has enabled us to observe the application of much ingenuity to a similar method, which, in the hands of that industrious race, was developed into a far more complete method; one, however, which never achieved the creation of true phonetic characters. We are now about to examine the Egyptian mode of writing, the practice of which preceded both of those just named, its earliest monuments dating full 1000 years prior to the earliest pretensions of the Chinese. Even at that early epoch the system developed on the banks of the Nile was more advanced than either of those just described, at the highest period of their development, and was indeed bordering on the disclosure of a positive alphabet full 5000 years before the Christian era. Nevertheless, the Egyptians failed to advance beyond the point thus early achieved; and it was left to other nations to develop the pictorial system into a purely alphabetic one; to strip it of its pictographic adjuncts, and realise the greatest and most important of the inventions of man. But the builders of the pyramids had done much; they invented purely phonetic or sound-expressing signs, in addition to iconographic, or pictorial ones; and "it is strange," says Prescott, in his History of Mexico, speaking incidentally of the Egyptian system of writing as compared with that of the Mexicans, "that, having thus broken down the thin partition which separated them from an alphabet, their latest monuments should exhibit no nearer approach to it than their earliest." They were, however, indisputably the first people, as far as monuments shew, who created a regular and intelligible system of recording thoughts and events; and before they arrived at the degree of perfection in the art in which we find it in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the most ancient of their existing temples, generation upon generation of their hereditary scribes must have passed their whole lives arduously labouring towards its accomplishment. We must, therefore, ever feel the deepest gratitude to those remote patriarchs of art,—to those priests of Egypt, from whom we derive the benefits we daily enjoy through the agency of this wonderful art-the means afforded by it for gratifying our thirst for knowldege—and the magical power it confers upon us, |