The literature of Russia is one of the meet recent, the literature of its bordering empire, China, is the meat ancient, to which the art of printing has been applied. It is no lea strange than true, that that admirable art was first invented in the country of all the world to whose language Its benefits are leapt applicable—mu a country destitute of an alphabet--and that while exercised there for centuries, it never penetrated into the neighbouring states of India, a land of literature and civilisation, with the most perfect alphabet in existence. The date of its first discovery is stated by M. Stanislas Julien, the eminent Chinese scholar, to be assigned by Chinese authorities to the 6th cen tury of the Christian era, more than eight hundred years prior to the discovery of Gutenberg. Through all the vicissitudes from the time of " the burning of the books " by the first emperor of united China, to the war against learning carried on by the present insurgents, litera ture has flourished in the " middle kingdom." in which it has in part taken the place of religion. The literature of China has always been more akin to that of modern Europe than that of any other Asiatic country. The Chinese have plays, which are a kind of composition unknown to the Arabs and Persians; they have novels and newspapers; they publish criminal trials; they circulate gratuitously religious and temperance tracts of their own. In regard to libraries their state is somewhat problematic.a1 M. Abel It6mmusat, in many respects a most judicious and critical writer, tells us in one of his Essays, that an Emperor of China ordered the publication of a select collection of the Chinese classics in 186,000 volumes.
A native Chinese, who was asked iu the present year (1660), at the British Museum, what was the largest library in China, said that he had never been to Peking, but that at Haug-chew he Lad seen one of 6,000,000 volumes; an excellent hbrary to receive the gigantic edition of the Chinese classics. Nothing can be more different from these extraordinary statements, than those of other Chinese scholars and travellers. There is in the British Museum, as in other European libraries, a catalogue printed in China in 1790, of the library of the Emperor liden Lung, the same who received Lord Macartney. M. Bazin, who published an analysis of this catalogue in the Paris Journal Asiatiquo' for 1850, states that he found it only contained 10,500 distinct works, including, it may be observed, 303 of the nature of encyclopaedias, some of which were of large extent. The library did not contain any work in the common and familiar language of China, and all plays, novels, and works of light literature were thus excluded. lUmusat himself, in a subsequent work to that in which ho mentioned the edition of the classics, fixed the number of volumes in the largest Chinese library at 300,000, and his first statement respectiug the classics is so obviously the fruit of some confusion between "volumes" and " books " or " chapters," that it is surprising other Chinese scholars should have repeated it without suspicion. It is evident that large libraries are rare in China. Europeans who have spent nearly
twenty years in the country, and seen more than one of its large cities, report that they never happened to see an extensive collection of books. Collections of ancient porcelain vases are numerous in China, but not collections of ancient volumes. Dr. Schott, in his Survey of Chinese Literature, in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy, quotes the existence of a Chinese printed book at St. Petersburg with the date 1419, as a phenomenon, and observes that it shows the opinion to be erroneous, that a Chinese book can hardly last longer than three centuries on account of the thickness of the paper. The white ants are also great enemies of Chinese literature. In fact, in the libraries of Chinese temples, founded by the Emperor Kang Ile, who reigned from 1661 to 1722, it is reported by European observers, that many of the books aro now illegible from decay, and it is far from improbable that some of the Chinese books presented to the Bodleian, by Arch bishop Laud, soon after its foundation in 1602, may be of older elate than any to be readily met with in China itself. • Chinese libraries are more numerous in Europe than Russian libraries. There is a fine one at Paris, containing many volumes presented to Louis XI V. by the then reigning Emperor of China ; there is one at St. Petersburg, one at Berlin, one at ;Vienna, and several in London. There is a collection at the East India House, Sir George Staunton's collection in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society, Dr. Morrison the lexicographer's collection at University Col lege, and Dr. Morrison the younger's collection united to Mr. Hun and several others, at the British Museum. The Museum collection, to which the presentation of Dr. Morrison the younger's library by time British government, added 11,500 volumes at once, is probably of not less than 20,000 volumes, and is scarcely inferior in numbers to any other in Europe.
The nations which are under the influence of Chinese civilisation are all cultivators of printing. The literature of the Manche). Tartars, who are intellectually subject to China, though they hold the position of its conquerors, is devoid of interest, as consisting almost entirely of servile translations from Chinese. The Japanese books are not tratmlations from the Chinese, but in most cases Chinese books with Japanese notes and explanations, mixed up in such a state of confusion that the accounts which recent travellers give us of the superiority of the Japanese to the Chinese in point of sagacity and ingenuity, appear to require confirmation before they can be admitted in matters of literature. Siebold, who enjoyed unusual opportunities of observation, stated that libraries are numerous in Japan, and that those both of the secular and the ecclesiastical empire were extensive, but declined giving any opinion as to the numbers which Balbi assumed to be about 150,000 volumes in each. If Siebold's statement were well-founded, that " from five to eight thousand " small volumes, maps, dr.e. were annually published in the Japanese cities, this estimate has nothing improbable.