During the time I should be required to reside in _Yuen-min-yuen_, I particularly wished to have none other than Chinese servants, that I might be under the necessity of extending the little knowledge I had already acquired of the spoken language. This is by no means difficult to learn except in the nice intonations or inflexions of voice, but the written character is, perhaps of all others, the most abstruse and most perplexing both to the eye and to the memory. The length of time that is usually required by the Chinese, together with the intense study and stretch of the memory which they find necessary in order to obtain a very small proportion of the characters that form the language, are serious obstructions to the progress of the arts and sciences, but favourable to the stability of the government of which indeed the language may be considered as one of the great bulwarks. But the observations I have to make on this subject will more properly be reserved for a separate chapter. On arriving at _Yuen-min-yuen_ I found a number of Chinese workmen busily employed in breaking open the packages, some in one place and some in another, to the no little danger of the globes, clocks, glass lustres, and such like frangible articles, many of which must inevitably have suffered under less careful and dexterous hands than those of the Chinese. As it was intended they should be placed in one large room, the great hall in which the Emperor gives audience to his ministers, the first operation was to move them all thither, and carefully to unpack them; and we had the satisfaction to find that not a single article was either missing or injured. We had not been long here, before a gentleman appeared who, notwithstanding his Chinese dress, I soon perceived to be an European. He introduced himself by saying, in the Latin language, that his name was Deodato a Neapolitan missionary, and that the court had appointed him to act as interpreter, hoped he might be useful to us, and offered his services in the most handsome manner; and, I have great pleasure in availing myself of this opportunity to acknowledge the friendly and unremitting attention I received from him during a residence of five weeks in this palace, and the very material assistance he afforded in explaining the nature, value, and use of the several pieces of machinery to those Chinese who were appointed to superintend them. Signor Deodato was an excellent mechanic; and in this capacity was employed in the palace to inspect and keep in order the numberless pieces of clock-work that had found their way thither, chiefly from London.