idioms which are now being imported into the language are making it
less pure.

The written language, too well known to need detailed description, a
thing of beauty and a joy for ever to those able to appreciate it, said
to have taken originally the form of knotted cords and then of notches
on wood (though this was more probably the origin of numeration than of
writing proper), took later that of rude outlines of natural objects,
and then went on to the phonetic system, under which each character is
composed of two parts, the radical, indicating the meaning, and the
phonetic, indicating the sound. They were symbols, non-agglutinative
and non-inflexional, and were written in vertical columns, probably
from having in early times been painted or cut on strips of bark.


Achievements of the Chinese

As the result of all this fitful fever during so many centuries,
we find that the Chinese, after having lived in nests "in order to
avoid the animals," and then in caves, have built themselves houses
and palaces which are still made after the pattern of their prototype,
with a flat wall behind, the openings in front, the walls put in after
the pillars and roof-tree have been fixed, and out-buildings added on
as side extensions. The _k'ang_, or 'stove-bed' (now a platform made
of bricks), found all over the northern provinces, was a place scooped
out of the side of the cave, with an opening underneath in which (as
now) a fire was lit in winter. Windows and shutters opened upward,
being a survival of the mat or shade hung in front of the apertures
in the walls of the primitive cave-dwelling. Four of these buildings
facing each other round a square made the courtyard, and one or more