got his leg broken, it would be happy for him to get such a boy for his first physician and serjeant-surgeon. The boy (if he had seen his master's practice in but one or two similar cases) would certainly know how to set his Imperial Majesty's leg, and would probably cure him of his pleurisy, which none of his own subjects could do." Having thus given a slight sketch of the state of some of the leading branches in science, arts, and manufactures, omitting purposely that of agriculture, which will be noticed among the subjects of a future section, I think, upon the whole, it may fairly be concluded, that the Chinese have been among the first nations, now existing in the world, to arrive at a certain pitch of perfection, where, from the policy of the government, or some other cause, they have remained stationary: that they were civilized, fully to the same extent they now are, more than two thousand years ago, at a period when all Europe might be considered, comparatively, as barbarous; but that they have since made little progress in any thing, and been retrograde in many things: that, at this moment, compared with Europe, they can only be said to be great in trifles, whilst they are really trifling in every thing that is great. I cannot however exactly subscribe to an opinion pronounced on them by a learned and elegant writer[22], who was well versed in oriental literature, as being rather too unqualified; but he was less acquainted with their character than that of any other Asiatic nation, and totally ignorant of their language. "Their letters," says he, "if we may so call them, are merely the symbols of ideas; their philosophy seems yet in so rude a state, as hardly to deserve the appellation; they have no ancient monuments from which their origin can be traced, even by plausible conjecture; their sciences are wholly exotic; and their mechanical arts have nothing in them characteristic of a particular family; nothing which any set of men, in a country so highly favoured by nature, might not have discovered and improved." [22] Sir William Jones. CHAP. VII. Government--Laws--Tenures of Land and Taxes--Revenues--Civil and Military Ranks, and Establishments.