ABSTRACT
A knowledge of the Chinese language is a passport to the confidence of the people, and when foreigners generally learn it the natives will begin to divest themselves of their prejudices and contempt. The "homoglot" character of the Chinese people has arisen more from the high standard of their literature, and the political institutions growing out of its canonical books, than from any one other cause. The Chinese have paid great and praiseworthy attention to their language, and furnished us with all needed books to its study. Premising that the original symbols were ideographic, the necessities of the case compelled their contraction as much as possible, and soon resulted in arbitrary signs for all common uses. Chinese philologists consider these two classes as comprising all the symbols in the language, which depict objects either in whole or in part, and whose meaning is apparent from the resemblance to the object, or from the position of the parts.
