Not only the great population and flourishing agriculture of this fruitful country, but the cultivation of silk, for which it has been celebrated from all antiquity; the culture of the tea-plant, which forms such an important article of European trade; as well as the knowledge of several most useful medicinal productions of nature; and unique and, in their way, excellent products of industry and manufacture; prove the very high degree of civilization which this people has attained to. And how should not that people be entitled to a high or one of the highest places among civilized nations, which had known, many centuries before Europe, the art of printing, gun-powder, and the magnet--those three so highly celebrated and valuable discoveries of European skill? Instead of the regular art of printing with transposeable letters, which would not suit the Chinese system of writing, this people make use of a species of lithography, which, to all essential purposes is the same, and attended with the same effects. Gunpowder serves in China, as it did in Europe in the infancy of the discovery, rather for amusement and for fire-works, than for the more serious purpose of warlike fortification and conquest: and though this people are acquainted with the magnetic needle, they have never made a like extended application of its powers, and never employ it either in a confined river and coasting navigation, or on the wide ocean, on which they never venture. The Chinese are remarkable too for the utmost polish and refinement of manners, and even for a fastidious urbanity and a love of stately ceremonial. In many respects indeed their politeness and refinement almost equal those of European nations, or at least are very superior to what we usually designate by the term of oriental manners--a term which in our sense can apply only to the more contiguous Mahometan countries of the Levant. Of this assertion we may find a sufficient proof in any single tale that pourtrays the present Chinese life and manners, in the novel, for instance, translated by M. Remusat.[43] In their present manners and fashions, however, there are many things utterly at variance with European taste and feelings; I need only mention the custom of the dignitaries, functionaries, and men of letters, letting their nails grow to the length of birds' claws, and that other custom in women of rank, of compressing their feet to a most artificial diminutiveness. Both customs, according to the recent account of a very intelligent Englishman, serve to mark and distinguish the upper class; for the former renders the men totally incapable of hard or manual labour, and the latter impedes the women of rank in walking, or at least gives them a mincing gait, and a languid, delicate and interesting air. These minute traits of manners should not be overlooked in the general sketch of this nation, for they perfectly correspond to many other characteristic marks and indications of unnatural stiffness, childish