[Footnote I-32: It would appear that Chinese annalists themselves were not agreed as to the period when printing by the hand from wood-blocks was first practised in that country. “Nicholas Trigaltius, a member of our order,” writes Herman Hugo, “who has recently returned from China, gives the following information respecting printing, which he professes to have carefully extracted from the annals of the Chinese themselves. ‘_Typography is of somewhat earlier date in China than in Europe, for it is certain that it was practised in that country about five centuries ago. Others assert that it was practised in China at a period prior to the Christian era._’”--Hermannus Hugo, De Prima Origine Scribendi, p. 211. Antwerpiæ, 1617.] Although so little is positively known of the ancient history of “the great out-lying empire of China,” as it is called by Sir William Jones, yet it has been most confidently referred to as affording authentic evidence of the high degree of the civilization and knowledge of the Chinese at a period when Europe was dark with the gloom of barbarism and ignorance. Their early history has been generally found, when opportunity has been afforded of impartially examining it, to be a mere tissue of absurd legends; compared to which, the history of the settlement of King Brute in Britain is authentic. With astronomy as a science they are scarcely acquainted; and their specimens of the fine arts display little more than representations of objects executed not unfrequently with minute accuracy, but without a knowledge of the most simple elements of correct design, and without the slightest pretensions to art, according to our standard. One of the two Mahometan travellers who visited China in the ninth century, expressly states that the Chinese were unacquainted with the sciences; and as neither of them takes any notice of printing, the mariner’s compass, or gunpowder, it seems but reasonable to conclude that the Chinese were unacquainted with those inventions at that period.[I-33] [Footnote I-33: The pretensions of the Chinese to excellence in science are ably exposed by the learned Abbé Renaudot in a disquisition “Sur les sciences des Chinois,” appended to his translation, from the Arabic, entitled “Anciennes Relations des Indes et de la Chine, de deux Voyageurs Mahométans, qui y allèrent dans le neuvième siècle.”--8vo. Paris, 1718.]