ted results which that very scorn
enables them to derive from it. To confine myself to what concerns
the people of the West, and to attempt to justify what I said at the
commencement of this Memoir, that the effects of the communications
with the nations of Upper Asia, in the thirteenth century, had
contributed indirectly to the progress of European civilization, I
will conclude with a reflection, which I shall offer with the more
confidence, that it is not entirely new, while, at the same time, the
facts we have just investigated seem calculated to give it a sanction
it had not before.

"Before the establishment of the intercourse which, first the
Crusades, and then, later, the irruption of the Mongols, caused to
spring up between the nations of the East and those of the West, the
greater part of those inventions, which distinguished the close of
the middle ages, had been known to the Asiatics for centuries. The
polarity of the loadstone had been discovered and put into operation
in China from the remotest antiquity. Gunpowder had been as long
known to the Hindoos and the Chinese, the latter of whom had, in the
tenth century, 'thunder carriages,' which seem to have been cannon.
It is difficult to account in any other way for the fire-stone
throwers, which are so often mentioned in the history of the Mongols.
Houlagou, when he set out for Persia, had in his army a body of
Chinese artillerymen. Again, the first edition of the classic books
engraved on wooden boards is dated in the year 952. The institution
of bank notes, and of banking and exchange offices, took place among
the Jou-Tchen in 1154. Bank notes were adopted by the Mongols
established in China; they were known to the Persians by the same
name as the Chinese give them, and Josaphat Barbaro was informed in
1450 by an intelligent Tartar whom he met at Asof, and who had been
on an embassy to China, that this sort of money was printed in China
every year _con nuova stampa_; and this expression is remarkable
enough, considering the time when Barbaro made this observation.
Lastly, playing cards--into the origin of which so many learned
antiquarians would not have busied themselves to inquire, were it not
that it marked one of the first applications of the art of engraving
on wood--were invented in China in the year 1120.