hat the slightest
mistake in modulation renders the speaker unintelligible. And in
addressing a great man, in place of "my Lord," you may call him a
_beast_, the word being the some, all the difference consisting in the
tone of it. A language like this must ever be a bar to the progress and
accomplishments of literature. Of medicine they are very ignorant. The
ginseng, which they pretended was a universal remedy, is found to be a
root of no singular virtue. Their books consist of odes without poetry,
and of moral maxims, excellent in themselves, but without investigation
or reasoning. For, to philosophical discussion and metaphysics they seem
utterly strangers; and, when taught mathematics by the Jesuits, their
greatest men were lost in astonishment. Whatever their political wisdom
has been, at present it is narrow and barbarous. Jealous lest strangers
should steal their arts--arts which are excelled at Dresden, and other
parts of Europe--they preclude themselves from the great advantages
which arise from an intercourse with civilized nations. Yet, in the laws
which they impose on every foreign ship which enters their ports for
traffic, they even exceed the cunning and avarice of the Dutch. In their
internal policy the military government of Rome under the emperors is
revived, with accumulated barbarism. In every city and province the
military are the constables and peace officers. What a picture is this!
Nothing but Chinese or Dutch industry could preserve the traffic and
population of a country under the control of armed ruffians. But, hence
the emperor has leisure to cultivate his gardens, and to write
despicable odes to his concubines.

Whatever was their most ancient doctrine, certain it is that the
legislators who formed the present system of China presented to their
people no other object of worship than _Tien Kamti_, the material
heavens and their influencing power; by which an intelligent principle
is excluded. Yet, finding that the human mind in the rudest breasts is
conscious of its weakness, and prone to believe the occurrences of life
under the power of lucky or unlucky observances, they permitted their
people the use of sacrifices to those Lucretian gods of superstitious
fear. Nor was the principle of devotion, imprinted by Heaven in the
human heart, alone perverted; another unextinguishable passion was also
misled. On tablets, in every family, are written the names of the last
three of their ancestors, ad