the blood; they inoculated for the small-pox in the ninth century; and
about the same time they invented printing. Their bronze money was made as
early as 1100 B.C., and its form has not been changed since the beginning
of the Christian era. The mariner's compass, gunpowder, and the art of
printing were made known to Europe through stories told by missionaries
returning from Asia. These missionaries, coasting the shores of the
Celestial Empire in Chinese junks, saw a little box containing a
magnetized needle, called Ting-nan-Tchen, or "needle which points to the
south." They also noticed terrible machines used by the armies in China
called Ho-pao or fire-guns, into which was put an inflammable powder,
which produced a noise like thunder and projected stones and pieces of
iron with irresistible force.

Father Hue, in his "Christianity in China," says that "the Europeans who
penetrated into China were no less struck with the libraries of the
Chinese than with their artillery. They were astonished at the sight of
the elegant books printed rapidly upon a pliant, silky paper by means of
wooden blocks. The first edition of the classical works printed in China
appeared in 958, five hundred years before the invention of Gutenberg. The
missionaries had, doubtless, often been busied in their convents with the
laborious work of copying manuscript books, and the simple Chinese method
of printing must have particularly attracted their attention. Many other
marvellous productions were noticed, such as silk, porcelain,
playing-cards, spectacles, and other products of art and industry unknown
in Europe. They brought back these new ideas to Europe; 'and from that
time,' says Abel Remusat, 'the West began to hold in due esteem the most
beautiful, the most populous, and the most anciently civilized of all the
four quarters of the world. The arts, the religious faith, and the
languages of its people were studied, and it was even proposed to
establish a professorship for the Tartar language in the University of