If no traces remained, nor any authorities could be produced, of the antiquity of the Chinese nation, except the written character of their language, this alone would be sufficient to decide that point in its favour. There is so much originality in this language, and such a great and essential difference between it and that of any other nation not immediately derived from the Chinese, that not the most distant degree of affinity can be discovered, either with regard to the form of the character, the system on which it is constructed, or the idiom, with any other known language upon the face of the globe. Authors, however, and some of high reputation, have been led to suppose that, in the Chinese character, they could trace some relation to those hieroglyphical or sacred inscriptions found among the remains of the ancient Egyptians; others have considered it to be a modification of hieroglyphic writing, and that each character was the symbol or comprehensive form of the idea it was meant to express, or, in other words, an abstract delineation of the object intended to be represented. To strengthen such an opinion, they have ingeniously selected a few instances where, by adding to one part, and curtailing another, changing a straight line into a curved one, or a square into a circle, something might be made out that approached to the picture, or the object of the idea conveyed by the character as, for example, the character 田, representing _a cultivated piece of ground_, they supposed to be the picture of an inclosure, turned up in ridges; yet it so happens that, in this country, there are no inclosures; the character, 口 a _mouth_, has been considered by them as a very close resemblance of that object; 上 and 下 _above_ and _below_, distinctly marked these points of position; the character 人, signifying _man_, is, according to their opinion, obviously an abbreviated representation of the human figure; yet the very same character, with an additional line across, thus 大, which by the way approaches nearer to the human figure, having now arms as well as legs, signifies the abstract quality _great_; and with a second line thus 天 the material or visible _heaven_, between either of which and _man_ it would be no easy task to find out the analogy; and still less so to trace an affinity between any of them, and 犬 which signifies _a dog_.