First, then, that the knowledge of ese among Europeans has ged, is only so far true, it seems to us, that the greater part of the difficulty of acquiring a knowledge of the language has been removed.
"The once prevalent belief, " says Mr. Giles, "in the great difficulty of acquiring a colloquial knowledge, even of a single ese dialect has long siaken its place among other historical fis." Indeed, even with regard to the written language, a student in the British sular Service, after two years residen Peking and a year or two at a sulate, ow readily make out at sight the general meaning of an ordinary despatch. That the knowledge of ese a-mong fners in a has so far ged, we readily admit; but what is tended for beyond this we feel very mued to doubt.
After the early Jesuit missiohe publication of Dr. Morri-sons famous diary is justly regarded as the point de depart of all that has been aplished in ese scholarship. The work will certainly remain a standing mo of the earness, zeal and stiousness of the early Protestant Missionaries. After Morrison came a class of scholars of whom Sir John Davis and Dr. Gutzlaff might be taken as representatives. Sir John Davis really knew no ese, and he was ho enough to fess it himself. He certainly spoke Mandarin and could perhaps without much difficulty read a novel written in that dialect. But suowledge as he then possessed, would now-a-days scarcely qualify a man for an interpreter-ship in any of the sulates. It is heless very remarkable that the notions about the ese of most Englishmen, even to this day, will be found to have been acquired from Sir John Davis s book on a. Dr. Gutzlaff perhaps knew a little more ese than Sir John Davis; but he attempted to pass himself off as knowing a great deal more than he did. The late Mr. Thomas Meadows afterwards did good servi exposing the pretension utzlaff, and such other men as the missionaries Hue and Du Halde. After this, it is curious to find Mr.Boulger, in his ret History of a, quoting these men as authorities.
In France, Remusat was the first to occupy a Chair of ese Professorship in any European Uy. Of his labours we are not in a position to express an opinion. But one book of his attracted notice: it was a translation of a novel, "The Two Cousins. The book was read by Leigh Hunt, and by him reeo Carlyle, and by Carlyle to John Stirling, who read it with delight, and said that the book was certainly written by a man of genius, but "a man of genius after the dragon pattern, "the Ju Kiao Li, * as the novel is called in ese, is a pleasant enough book to read, but it takes no high place even among the inferior class of books of which it is a spe. heless it is alleasant to think that thoughts and images from the brain of a aman have actually passed through such minds as those of Carlyle and Leigh Hunt.
After Remusat followed Stanislas Julien and Pauthier. The Germa Heine says that Julien made the wonderful and important discovery that Mons. Pauthier did not uand ese at all and the latter, oher hand, also made a discovery, hat Monsieur Julien knew no Sanscrit. heless the pi work done by these writers was very siderable. One advahey possessed was that they were thh masters of their own language. Another French writer might be mentioned, Mons. D Harvey St. Denys, whose translation of the T ang poets is a breach made into oment of ese literature in whiothing has been done before or since.
In Germany Dr. Plath of Munich published