It is true certain ancient characters are still extant, in which a rude representation of the image is employed; as for instance, a circle for the sun, and a crescent for the moon, but these appear to have been used only as abbreviations, in the same manner as these objects are still characterized in our almanacks, and in our astronomical calculations. Thus also the _kingdom of China_ is designed by a square, with a vertical line drawn through the middle, in conformity perhaps with their ideas of the earth being a square, and China placed in its center; so far these may be considered as symbols of the objects intended to be represented. So, also, the numerals one, two, three, being designed by 一 二 三, would naturally suggest themselves as being fully as convenient for the purpose, and perhaps more so than any other; and where the first series of numerals ended, which according to the universal custom of counting by the fingers was at _ten_, the very act of placing the index of the right hand on the little finger of the left would suggest the form of the vertical cross 十 as the symbol or representation of the number ten. I cannot avoid taking notice in this place of a publication of Doctor Hager, which he calls an "_Explanation of the Elementary Characters of the Chinese_." In this work he has advanced a most extraordinary argument to prove an analogy between the ancient Romans and the Chinese, from the resemblance which he has fancied to exist between the numeral characters and the numeral sounds made use of by those two nations. The Romans, he observes, expressed their numerals one, two, three, by a corresponding number of vertical strokes I. II. III. which the Chinese place horizontally 一 二 三. The Romans designed the number ten by an oblique cross X, and the Chinese by a vertical one 十. This resemblance in the forming of their numerals, so simple and natural that almost all nations have adopted it, is surely too slight a coincidence for concluding, that the people who use them must necessarily, at some period or other, have had communication together. The Doctor however seems to think so, and proceeds to observe, that the three principal Roman cyphers, I. V. X. or one, five and ten, are denoted in the Chinese language by the same sounds that they express in the Roman alphabet. This remark, although ingenious, is not correct. _One_ and _five_, it is true, are expressed in the Chinese language by the _y_ and _ou_ of the French, which it may be presumed, were the sounds that the letters I. and V. obtained in the ancient Roman alphabet; but with regard to the _ten_, or X, which, he says, the Chinese pronounce _xe_, he is entirely mistaken, the Chinese word for _ten_ in Pekin being _shee_, and in Canton _shap_. This error the Doctor appears to have been led into by consulting some vocabulary in the Chinese and Portuguese languages; in the latter of which the letter X is pronounced like our _sh_. But