The Chinese assert that they had the art of writing at a period 2950 years before Christ; but they have no records or monuments of that date; and their characters even to the present time, are entire words, representing objects, ideas or things, not sounds. In the art of printing, they pretend to have preceded the European nations about 2400 years, dating their invention of it from the tenth century before Christ. But they have never advanced beyond the first form of the art—letters engraved on solid wooden blocks—the very method in use by Koster, and his associates, until the invention of moveable types by John Gansfleisch, otherwise named John Gutenberg or Guttemberg, in 1435. In both arts, writing and printing alike, the Chinese have remained stiff, solid and immovable at the first step, with the characteristic unchangeability of the yellow races of Eastern Asia, so opposite to the indefinitely progressive and self-improving energy of the nations whose progenitors proceeded west from the original source and centre of the earth’s population. The same ink serves the Chinese both for writing and printing, as does the same kind of paper. This ink they invented about the end of the first century of the Christian era; before which time they wrote on boards or bamboos. Having next proceeded to the use of silken cloth for these purposes, the preparation of paper from that material naturally followed. Their ink, being carbonaceous and oleaginous, is, of course, (like that of the Egyptians and all the other ancients,) unfading, and unalterable by chemical agencies, though capable of being effaced or obscured by watery applications or exposure. As to their claim of having _invented_ the art of printing, we shall have something to say hereafter. The Aztecs (in Mexico, before the Spanish discovery and conquest,) extensively employed a picture-writing, as a means of recording events, during a period not exceeding two centuries before that epoch. They had the art of manufacturing materials as a basis of such writing, from the _Agave_ or American aloe, and from cotton, in the form of a very fine cloth. They also used prepared skins for the same purpose, the best specimens of which are pronounced to be more beautiful than the finest vellum. Their manuscripts were sometimes done up in rolls or scrolls, and frequently on tablets, in the form of a folding-screen. Their inks appear to have been coloring matters in watery solutions. The oldest Phoenician ink-writing of which any specimen has been preserved, dates no later than the second century before Christ, and may be much older. A fac-simile of a portion of it will be found among our illustrations, explained by notes referring to each by its number.