ABSTRACT
A writer in the Quarterly Review gives good reasons for placing the polite literature of the Chinese first for the insight it is likely to give Europeans into their habits of thought. The isolation of the Chinese prevented them from studying the various forms of government and jurisprudence observed in other countries and ages; it is this feature of originality which renders their legislation so interesting to western students. The amplifications of the maxims by Shun-chy Yungching contain much information respecting the theory of his government, and the position of the writer entitles him to speak from knowledge; his amplification of the fourteenth maxim shows their character. The general range and survey of Chinese literature, according to the Catalogue of the Imperial Libraries. It is, take it in a mass, a stupendous iponument of human toil, fitly compared, so far as it is calculated to instruct its readers in useful knowledge, to their Great Wall.
