The pride, or the policy, of the government affecting to despise any thing new or foreign, and the general want of encouragement to new inventions, however ingenious, have been greatly detrimental to the progress of the arts and manufactures. The people discover no want of genius to conceive, nor of dexterity to execute; and their imitative powers have always been acknowledged to be very great. Of the truth of this remark we had several instances at _Yuen-min-yuen_. The complicated glass lustres, consisting of several hundred pieces, were taken down, piece by piece, in the course of half an hour, by two Chinese, who had never seen any thing of the kind before, and were put up again by them with equal facility; yet Mr. Parker thought it necessary for our mechanics to attend at his warehouse several times to see them taken down and again put together, in order to be able to manage the business on their arrival in China. A Chinese undertook to cut a slip of glass from a large curved piece, intended to cover the great dome of the planetarium, after our two artificers had broken three similar pieces in attempting to cut them with the help of the diamond. The man performed it in private, nor could he be prevailed on to say in what manner he accomplished it. Being a little jagged along the margin, I suspect it was not cut but fractured, perhaps by passing a heated iron over a line drawn with water, or some other fluid. It is well known that a Chinese in Canton, on being shewn an European watch, undertook, and succeeded, to make one like it, though he had never seen any thing of the kind before, but it was necessary to furnish him with a main spring, which he could not make: and they now fabricate in Canton, as well as in London, and at one third of the expence, all those ingenious pieces of mechanism which at one time were sent to China in such vast quantities from the repositories of Coxe and Merlin. The mind of a Chinese is quick and apprehensive, and his small delicate hands are formed for the execution of neat work.