"had introduced printing, already practised by the Chinese, the comedies of Menander and entire decades of Livy would have been perpetuated in the editions of the sixth century. A larger view of the globe might have promoted improvement of speculative science ; but the Christian geography was forcibly extracted from texts of Scripture ; and study of Nature was the surest symptom of an unbe- lieving mind." The time has gone by for regarding the Chinese as a hopelessly unprogressive race. Here is no dank moss-grown forest, where the falling leaves of cen- turies have lain undisturbed, only to be overshot with dead trunks of the trees that bore them. How decisively recent wars with European powers have opened the way for China to fresh interest in their cultures, and earnest efforts to stand abreast with them in social progress, will perhaps be more manifest after a short historical review of the relations of the Empire, commercial and social, with the outside world.
