deed, both national mufick and national poetry, and both of them beautifully pathetick; but of painting, fculpture, or architecture, as arts of imagination, they seem (like other Afiaticks) to have no idea. Inftead, therefore, of enlarging separately on each of those heads, I fhall briefly inquire, how far the literature and religious practices of China confirm or oppofe the propofition, which I have advanced.

The declared and fixed opinion of M. DE GUIGNES, on the subject before us, is nearly connected with that of the Bráhmens: he maintains, that the Chinese were emigrants from Egypt; and the Egyptians, or Ethiopians, (for they were clearly the fame people) had indubitably a common origin with the old natives of India, as the affinity of their languages, and of their inftitutions, both religious and political, fully evinces; but that China was peopled a few centuries before our era by a colony from the banks of the Nile, though neither Persians nor Arabs, Tartars nor Hindus, ever heard of fuch an emigration, is a paradox, which the bare authority even of fo learned a man cannot support; and, fince reason grounded on facts can alone decide fuch a queftion, we have a right to demand clearer evidence and ftronger arguments, than any that he has adduced. The hieroglyphicks of Egypt bear, indeed, a strong refem

blance to the mythological fculptures and paintings of India, but feem wholly diffimilar to the fymbolical fyftem of the Chinese, which might cafily have been invented (as they affert) by an individual, and might very naturally have been contrived by the firft Chinas, or out-caft Hindus, who either never knew, or had forgotten, the alphabetical characters of their wiser ancestors. As to the table and bufts of Isis, they seem to be given up as modern forgeries; but, if they were indifputably genuine, they would be nothing to the purpose; for the letters on the bust appear to have been designed as alphabetical; and the fabricator of them (if they really were fabricated in Europe) was uncommonly happy, since two or three of them are exactly the same with those on a metal pillar yet standing in the north of India. In Egypt, if we can rely on the teftimony of the Greeks, who ftudied no language but their own, there were two sets of alphabetical characters; the one popular, likę the various letters used in our Indian provinces ; and the other facerdotal, like the Devanagari, especially that form of it, which we see in the Véda; befides which they had two forts of facred Sculpture; the one fimple, like the figures of BUDDHA and the three RA'MAS; and the other, allegorical, like the images of GANE'S A, or Dipine Wisdom, and ISA'NI', or Nature, with all

their emblematical accompaniments; but the real character of the Chinese appears wholly diftinct from any Egyptian writing, either myfterious or popular; and, as to the fancy of M. DE GUIGNES, that the complicated symbols of China were at first no more than Phenician monograms, let us hope, that he has abandoned fo wild a conceit, which he started probably with no other view than to display his ingenuity and learning.

We have ocular proof, that the few radical characters of the Chinese were originally (like our aftronomical and chymical fymbols) the pictures or outlines of vifible objects, or figurative figns for fimple ideas, which they have multiplied by the most ingenious combinations and the livelieft metaphors; but, as the fyftem is peculiar, I believe, to themselves and the Japanese, it would be idly oftentatious to enlarge on it at prefent; and, for the reasons already intimated, it neither corroborates nor weakens the opinion, which I endeavour to fupport. The fame may as truly be faid of their spoken language; for, independently of its conftant fluctuation during a series of ages, it has the peculiarity of excluding four or five founds, which other nations articulate, and is clipped into monofyllables, even when the ideas expreffed by them, and the written fymbols for thofe ideas, are very complex. This has arisen,

I suppose, from the fingular habits of the people; for, though their common tongue be so mufically accented as to form a kind of recitative, yet it wants thofe grammatical accents, without which all human tongues would appear monofyllabick: thus Amita, with an accent on the first fyllable, means, in the Sanferit language, immeafurable; and the natives of Bengal pronounce it Omilo; but, when the religion of BUDDHA, the son of MA'YA', was carried hence into China, the people of that country, unable to pronounce the name of their new God, called him FoE, the fon of Mo-YE, and divided his epithet Amita into three fyllables O-MI-TO, annexing to them certain ideas of their own, and expreffing them in writing by three distinct symbols. We may judge from this instance, whether a comparison of their spoken tongue with the dialects of other nations can lead to any certain conclufion as to their origin; yet the inftance, which I have given, fupplies me with an argument from analogy, which I produce as conjectural only, but which appears more and more plaufible, the oftener I confider it. The BUDDHA of the Hindus is unquestionably the FOE of China; but

the

great progenitor of the Chinese is alfo named by them FO-HI, where the fecond monofyllable fignifies, it seems, a victim: now the ancestor of that military tribe, whom the Hindus call the

Chandravanfa, or Children of the MOON, was, according to their Puránas or legends, BUDHA, or the genius of the planet Mercury, from whom, in the fifth degree, descended a prince named DRUHYA; whom his father YAYA'TI fent in exile to the east of Hinduftán, with this imprecation, " may thy progeny be ignorant of the "Věda." The name of the banished prince could not be pronounced by the modern Chinefe; and, though I dare not conjecture, that the laft syllable of it has been changed into Yao, I may nevertheless observe that YAO was the fifth in defcent from Fo-HI, or at leaft the fifth mortal in the first imperial dynasty; that all Chinese history before him is confidered by Chinese themfelves as poetical or fabulous; that his father Ti-co, like the Indian king YAYA'TI, was the first prince who married feveral women; and that Fo-HI, the head of their race, appeared, say the Chinese, in a province of the west, and held his court in the territory of Chin, where the rovers, mentioned by the Indian legiflator, are supposed to have fettled. Another circumstance in the parallel is very remarkable: according to father DE PREMARE, in his tract on Chinese mythology, the mother of FO-HI was the Daughter of Heaven, furnamed Flower-loving, and, as the nymph was walking alone on the bank of a river with a fimilar name, the found herself on a