* The emperor of China calls himself the son of heaven; that
is, of God: for in the opinion of the Chinese, the material
of heaven, the arbiter of fatality, is the Deity himself.
"The emperor only shows himself once in ten months, lest the
people, accustomed to see him, might lose their respect; for
he holds it as a maxim that power can only be supported by
force, that the people have no idea of justice, and are not
to be governed but by coercion." Narrative of two Mahometan
travellers in 851 and 877, translated by the Abbe Renaudot
in 1718.

Notwithstanding what is asserted by the missionaries, this
situation has undergone no change. The bamboo still reigns
in China, and the son of heaven bastinades, for the most
trivial fault, the Mandarin, who in his turn bastinades the
people. The Jesuits may tell us that this is the best
governed country in the world, and its inhabitants the
happiest of men: but a single letter from Amyot has
convinced me that China is a truly Turkish government, and
the account of Sonnerat confirms it. See Vol. II. of Voyage
aux Indes, in 4to.

** As long as the Chinese shall in writing make use of their
present characters, they can be expected to make no progress
in civilization. The necessary introductory step must be
the giving them an alphabet like our own, or of substituting
in the room of their language that of the Tartars. The
improvement made in the latter by M. de Lengles, is
calculated to introduce this change. See the Mantchou
alphabet, the production of a mind truly learned in the