When, indeed, a considerable progress has been made in the language, the general meaning of many of the characters may be pretty nearly guessed at by the eye alone, as they will mostly be found to have some reference, either immediate or remote, though very often in a figurative sense, to the signification of the _key_ or _root_; in the same manner as in the classification of objects in natural history, every species may be referred to its proper genus. The signs, for instance, expressing the _hand_ and the _heart_, are two _roots_, and all the works of art, the different trades and manufactures, arrange themselves under the first, and all the passions, affections, and sentiments of the mind under the latter. The root of an _unit_ or _one_ comprehends all the characters expressive of unity, concord, harmony, and the like. Thus, if I observe a character compounded of the two simple _roots_, _one_ and _heart_, I have no difficulty in concluding that its signification is _unanimity_, but, if the sign of a _negative_ should also appear in the same character, the meaning will be reversed to _discord_ or _dissention_, literally _not one heart_. Many proper names of persons have the character signifying _man_ for their key or root, and all foreign names have the character _mouth_ or _voice_ annexed, which shews at once that the character is a proper name employed only to express sound without any particular meaning. Nor are these keys or roots, although sometimes placed on the right of the character, sometimes on the left, now at the top, and then at the bottom, so very difficult to be discovered to a person who knows but a little of the language, as Doctor Hager has imagined. This is by far the easiest part of the language. The abbreviations in the compound characters, and the figurative sense in which they are sometimes used, constitute the difficulty, by the obscurity in which they are involved, and the ambiguity to which they are liable. The Doctor is equally unfortunate in the discovery which he thinks he has made of a want of order in classing the elements according to the number of lines they contain. The instances he gives of such anomaly are in the two characters of 母 _moo_, mother; and 田 _tien_, cultivated ground: the first of which he is surprised to find among the elementary characters of _four_ lines, and the latter (which he asserts to be still more simple) among those of _five_. The Chinese, however, are not quite so much out of order as the Doctor seems to be out of his province in attempting a critique on a language, of which he really possesses a very superficial knowledge. The first character 母 _moo_ is composed of [Illustration: strokes] and the second 田 _tien_ of [Illustration: strokes]; the one of four and the other of five lines according to the arrangement of Chinese dictionaries, and their elementary treatises.