Among the roots or primitives that most frequently occur are those expressing the _hand_, _heart_, _mouth_, and the five elements, _earth_, _air_, _fire_, _wood_, and _water_. _Man_ is also a very common root. The composition of characters is capable of exercising a very considerable degree of ingenuity, and the analysis of them is extremely entertaining to a foreigner. As in a proposition of Euclid it is necessary to go through the whole demonstration before the figure to which it refers can be properly understood, so, in the Chinese character, the sense of the several component parts must first be known in order to comprehend the meaning of the compound. To endeavour to recollect them without this knowledge would be a laborious and almost impossible effort of the mind. Indeed, after this knowledge is acquired, the sense is sometimes so hid in metaphor, and in allusions to particular customs or ways of thinking, that when all the component parts of a character are well understood, the meaning may yet remain in obscurity. It may not be difficult to conceive, for instance, that in a figurative language, the union of the _sun_ and _moon_ might be employed to express any extraordinary degree of _light_ or _brilliancy_; but it would not so readily occur, that the character _foo_ or _happiness_, or _supreme felicity_, should be designed by the union of the characters expressing a spirit or demon, the number _one_ or _unity_, a _mouth_, and a piece of _cultivated ground_, thus 福. This character in the Chinese language is meant to convey the same idea as the word _comfort_ does in our own. The character implying the _middle_ of any thing, annexed to that of _heart_, was not inaptly employed to express _a very dear friend_, nor that with the _heart_ surmounted by a _negative_, to imply _indifference_, _no heart_; but it is not so easy to assign any reason why the character _ping_, signifying rank or order, should be expressed by the character _mouth_, repeated thrice, and placed like the three balls of a pawnbroker, thus 品, or why four of these mouths arranged as under, with the character _ta_, _great_, in the center, should imply an instrument, or piece of mechanism. 器. Nor would it readily occur why the character 男 _nan_, _masculine_, should be made up of _tien_, a _field_, and _lee_, _strength_, unless from the idea that the _male sex_ possesses _strength_, and only can inherit _land_. But that a _smoothness_ or _volubility_ of _speech_ 唫 should be designed by _koo_, _mouth_, and _kin_, _gold_, we can more easily conceive, as we apply the epithet _silver tongue_ pretty nearly on the same occasion. If the Chinese had rigidly adhered to the ingenious and philosophical mechanism they originally employed in the construction of their characters, it would be the most interesting of all languages. But such is far from being the case. New characters are daily constructed, in which convenience, rather than perspicuity, has been consulted.