Of Manchoo-Tartar books the largest collections in Europe are at Paris, that language having been a peculiar favourite of the French missionaries ; and there is a small collection in the British Museum. The largest assemblage of Japanese:books at present in Europe is that at Leyden, brought by Siebold from Japan ; but there are others at Vienna and Paris, and a few volumes, probably soon to be augmented, in our own national library.
After leaving China and Japan, it is necessary, in order to find another Asiatic nation, the main body of whose literature exists in print, to pass to the western extremity of Asia, and for the chief seat of its printing-presses to look still further westward in Europe. It is from the island-couvent of St. Lazzaro, near Venice, that the chief supply of books is sent forth to the Armenians, the "Jews of Christen dom." The same order of literary monks as flourishes at Venice, the Mechitarists, have now founded branch establishments in Vienna and Paris, at which the press is in full activity. They issue not only editions of the ancient Armenian historians, Moses of Chorene and others, but translations of the most popular and useful works from the European languages—Rollin's History' and Biisching's Geography,' the Paradise Lost' and the 'Night Thoughts," Robinson Crusoe' and Uncle Tom's Cabin.' In some antagonism to the Roman Catholic Armenians of Venice, who are attached to ancient Armenian, the American missionaries at Smyrna and elsewhere support Protestantism in modern Armenian ; and a few books in the language find their way from the press at Calcutta. Of the Venetian publications, there are probably sets in many European libraries, and the Museum has one which is believed to be complete in all but translations, and includes a large selection of these.
The literature of Sanscrit, the ancient language of India, was first made known beyond its ancestral precincts by the researches Of Englishmen. The names of Wilkins, Colebrooke, and Wilson, will always receive the veneration of scholars for their inestimable labours as pioneers in a field of study so ancient in one sense, so novel in another. Scarcely half a century has elapsed since the publication of Wilkins's Grammar, and the discovery of the Sanscrit language has changed the basis of philology. A language which eighty years ago was not known to a single European now counts its professors and students at Oxford and Berlin. Active however as the press has been, both in India and Europe, to reproduce some of the chief productions of Sanscrit literature, the main body of that literature must still be sought not in libraries of printed books, but of manuscripts. There are
now collections of some value at Berlin and Oxford, and even at Copenhagen and Paris, but the collection bequeathed by Colebrooke to the East India House at London, is the finest in Europe, and has been a magnet of attraction to Sanscrit scholars, similar to that pre sented to Hebrew scholars by the Oppenheimer collection at the Bodleian. The Sanscrit manuscripts at the Museum are less than 130, at the East India House more, it is believed, than 3000 volumes, and each volume there, on an average, contains four or five tracts. The best continental scholars are of opinion that without access to that collection, the study of Sanscrit literature cannot be satisfactorily pursued. The recent abolition of the East India Company has made the fate of their library a question for decision, and it is probable that most scholars would wish to see it deposited in tho British Museum, were it not that the regulations of the Museum prevent the manu scripts from being taken from within its walls, while the regulations of the East India library are in that respect more liberal than those of any other English establishment.
The languages of India, after the Sanscrit, more than twenty in number, have, except the Hindustanee, little of literary interest, as in most cases they contain hardly anything but translations, whether of works from other oriental languages by natives, or of the Bible by missionaries, or of medical and scientific works by other Europeans, anxious to improve the native mind. Slender as the individual importance of these productions may be, it is still wonderful that so little attempt appears to have been made to collect them, either in India or England ; for in the first place they are certain to have some kind of philological value, and in the second they are memorials of one of the most singular phases of society that has ever existed. The English student of one of the languages, with a view of qualifying himself for office in India, might be materially benefited by finding assembled here a good collection of its literature. The best of the kind in London are at the Royal Asiatic Society and at the East India House ; but much still remains to be done.