The Chinese are not entirely insensible to the advantages of European typography. There is a story current in books on printing, that Jesuit missionaries, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, cast 250,000 Chinese characters in the form of movable types.[46] Here is an obvious error: if we consider the work done afterward with these types, the quantity stated is altogether too small for the types and too large for the punches. It is further said that the Jesuit missionaries, with the permission of the reigning emperor, [p119] printed a collection of ancient and standard works in six thousand octavo volumes. Of this edition, there are now in Paris, the _History of Music_ in sixty volumes, the _History of the Chinese Language_ in eighty volumes, and the _History of Foreign Peoples_ in seventy-five volumes.[47] A printing office, in which movable types of cast metal are used, has been in operation in Peking since the year 1776. The types of this office are of home manufacture, made from punches of hard wood and matrices of baked porcelain. There may be other instances of an occasional use of types for special purposes, but they are exceptions to the general practice. Ever since their invention of the art, the largest part of Chinese printed work has been done, as it is now done, by xylography. So long as they continue to use these peculiar characters, this simple method of printing must be preferred for its great cheapness and simplicity. We may smile at the clumsiness of the method, but we should not overlook the fact that it is efficient. “Every one,” Du Halde says, “hath the liberty to print what he pleaseth, without the supervising, censure or licence of any one, and with so small charge, that for every hundred letters perfectly engraved in the manner above said, they pay four pence half-penny, yet every letter consists of many strokes.” In no country are books so cheap and so abundant as they are in China. The American book or pamphlet in paper cover, sometimes sold for seventy-five cents, more frequently for one dollar, seems of exorbitantly high price when contrasted with a Chinese book of similar size, which can be had in China for the equivalent of eight or ten cents. If the Chinese have not derived great benefits from printing, it is obvious that their failure has not been produced by the high price of printed work.