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CHAPTER V.

THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA.

COMPARATIVE CIVILIZATION—SOLILOQUY OF A CHINESE—NATIVE POLITENESS—DISPLAYED IN CONVERSATION—AND DAILY INTERCOURSE—GENIUS OF THE CHINESE—DISCOVERY OF THE COMPASS—THE ART OF PRINTING—THE INVENTION OF GUNPOWDER—THE SCIENCES—ASTRONOMY—BOTANY—MEDICINE—SURGERY—THE ARTS—PAINTING—ENGRAVING—MANUFACTURE OF SILK—PORCELAIN—TEA—PAPER—LACKERED WARE—METALS—CONCLUSION.

In seeking to evangelize the heathen world, two descriptions of people claim our attention; namely, the barbarous and the civilized. China belongs to the latter class. Instead of a savage and untutored people—without a settled government, or written laws,—roaming the desert, and living in caves,—dressed in skins, and sitting on the ground,—knowing nothing of fashion, nor tasting luxuries; we behold in the Chinese a quiet, orderly, well-behaved nation, exhibiting many traces of civilization, and displaying them at a period when the rest of mankind were for the most part sunk in barbarism. Of course we must not look for that high degree of improvement, and those well-defined civil rights, which are in a great measure the effects of Christianity; neither are we warranted to expect in China any of those advances in science, or improvements in the arts, which now distinguish Europe, and which are the result of that march of mind so charac-

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