It is interesting to notice how, in the course of ages, the old hieroglyphics have been transformed into the present characters. The symbol representing the verb to listen, two folding-doors and an ear between them {symbol} is now written {symbol}. Two shells exactly alike originally stood for two friends {symbol}; this symbol has been changed to {symbol}. A mountain is now {symbol}; a field {symbol}. The most complicated modern character is made by fifty-two strokes of the pen. =Antiquity of Chinese Literature.=—China prides herself on her antiquity, and her literature carries us back to the remotest past. From those early days to the present the chain is almost unbroken, notwithstanding the irreparable loss sustained when the ruthless Ching Wang destroyed the great bulk of Chinese literature (220-205 B.C.). This emperor is noted for his erection of the Great Wall, and notorious for his contempt of learning. Thinking to reconcile the masses to his despotism by keeping them in ignorance, and to deceive posterity with the belief that he had founded the empire, he ordered all books, except those on husbandry, divination, and medicine, to be burned. Any person found with a book in his possession was condemned to labor four years on the Great Wall, and several hundred scholars who resisted the royal decree were buried alive. The dynasty of “the book-burner,” however, was not long after overthrown; and among the succeeding princes was found a “restorer of literature,” who collected and preserved for future generations the writings which, concealed by the people in the walls of their houses or buried beneath the beds of streams, had escaped destruction. To his praiseworthy efforts we are indebted for all that remains of the ancient literature,—the Sacred Books of China, edited by Confu’cius her admirable philosopher, as well as for the works of Confucius himself and his disciples. =Confucius=, to whom we are thus introduced, the _reverend master_, the beloved teacher of his countrymen, stands out in bold relief as the most distinguished personage in Chinese history. His birth, which took place 551 B.C., was mysteriously predicted, as legend tells us, on a precious stone found in his father’s garden: “A child is about to be born, pure as the crystal wave; he shall be a king, but without territorial dominion.” Wonderfully has this prophecy been fulfilled; the child, as we shall see, became a king whose subjects were numbered by hundreds of millions.