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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
The Empire of China furnishes a subject of investigation, highly deserving the attention of the antiquarian and the philosopher; and one which, in proportion as it has been little attempted, affords the ampler field for research. It may in some measure be considered as a reproach to this country, that, notwithstanding our having a much greater interest in the subject, we should have permitted the learned of France and of Germany to anticipate us on many points of inquiry: although the labours of the last twenty years, and more especially of the last ten, have gone far towards giving us the first place in the ranks of Chinese literature; and much more may be expected from the future.
page 1 note * See, in Morrison's, Chronology, p.57, a quotation from Choo-foo-tsze, in which he says: “It is impossible to give entire credit to the traditions of these remote ages.’Google Scholar
page 2 note * “All they relate concerning the progress of the arts and sciences, is an incongruous mass of fictions. Every thing with them is produced as if by enchantment: and events succeed each otiher with inconceivable rapidity; but the greatest absurdity consists in attributing all inventions of that nature to princes, who we know have few opportunities of making discoveries.”—De Pauw, Preliminary Discourse on the Egyptians and Chinese.
page 2 note † “At this time,” says a Chinese author, speaking of Fo-hi, “men differed but little from brutes; they knew their mother, but not their father.”—See Du Halde.
page 3 note * See Morrison's, Chinese Chronology, p. 52.Google Scholar
page 4 note * It would perhaps be going too far to condemn all that precedes the time of Chow, as absolutely fabulous; but it is so mixed up with fable, as not to deserve the name of history. They have no records older than the compilations of Confucius.
page 4 note † Yang-tsze-keang, or 
Keang, “The River.”
page 6 note * The substance of the Great Wall, which extends along a space of 1,500 miles, from the shore of the Yellow Sea to Western Tartary, has been estimated by Mr. Barrow to exceed in quantity that of all the houses in Great Britain, and to be capable of surrounding the whole earth with a wall several feet high.
page 7 note * Allowing that this might have happened before the burning of the books, B.C. 200, it must necessarily have been after the time of Confucius, B. C. 500.
page 7 note † During the learned and polite, but unwarlike dynasty of Sung (A.D. 950—1281), who were crushed by the Mongols, enormous supplies of money and silk were repeatedly demanded and obtained by the Barbarians. This unwise submission had the natural effect of increasing their insolence, and hastening the ruin of the empire.
page 7 note ‡ The art of printing is not recorded to have arisen until about A.D. 925, a little, before the time of Sung.
page 8 note * The literary world is under great obligations to Professor Bopp of Germany, for proving beyond a doubt that the Sanscrit and the Greek are little more than dialects of the same language. The similarity of a few scattered words might have been regarded as accidental coincidence; but it requires considerable hardihood of disbelief to set aside the resemblance that runs through the whole conjugations of verbs, &c. &c. Even in the above-mentioned word amita, it is impossible not to allow a great resemblance to 
the (a) in both cases having the negative force.
page 8 note † The translation has since been presented by Sir George to the Royal Asiatic Society, and is now in their Library.
page 10 note * It was about the end of the same dynasty of Tang, or very soon after, that the strange custom of cramping the feet of the higher classes of womfen is recorded to have commenced. As it has always appeared to myself impossible to, refer the origin of such shocking mutilation to any notions of physical beauty, however arbitrary, I am inclined to ascribe it to a principle which unquestionably dictates the long nails of the literati and higher classes of Chinese men. The idea conveyed by these is exemption from labour, and as the small feet make perfect cripples of the ladies, it is fair to conclude that the idea of gentility which they convey, arises from a similar association. That appearance of helplessness, which the. mutilation induces, is much admired by the Chinese, notwithstanding its usual concomitant of extreme, unhealthiness; and in their poetry, I have frequently observed the tottering gait of the poor women compared to “the “waving of a willow in the breeze.” A Mandarin once told me, with great gravity, that the compression of the ladies' feet in early youth was highly desirable,—quod carnem ex pedibus in crura misit, et pinguiora ea ob hanc causam fecit.
page 13 note * “An account of the whole people.”
page 14 note * Malthus. Political Economy, ch. 7, sect. 7, page 427.
page 14 note † Extraordinary wealth never fails, in a country where justice is administered as it is in China, to attract the grasp of rapacity; “feriuntque summos fulmina montes.” A certain affectation of patriarchal simplicity and purity, on the part of the Mandarins, operates as a sumptuary law, and gives a corresponding tone to the habits of the people, as far as relates to external equipage and show. Superfluous wealth finds itself a vent in the shades of domestic privacy, in contributing to the gratification of every species of sensuality.
page 17 note * Between the 40th and 23d degrees of North latitude, that is, in the finest part of the temperate Zone.
page 17 note † I was led to make the above observations during a voyage among the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, and I have since been gratified in finding them confirmed by the gredt authority of Mr. Malthus, in his late work upon Political Economy, in which he draws some important conclusions from the remarks of de Humboldt, M. upon New Spain, ch. vii., sect, iv., p. 381.Google Scholar