Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/125

 Next in the order of utility stands the art of printing, which it appears was known to the Chinese upwards of nine hundred years ago. Some, say, that it was invented by one Fung-taou, the time-serving minister of the first ruler of the Tsin dynasty, A.D. 937; though by a reference to Chinese history, it appears, that eleven years previous, the ruler of Tang ordered the nine classics to be engraved, printed, and sold to the people. The historians of those times do not seem to have any doubt about the art having been then in use, and merely discuss the propriety of selling the books, rather than give them away, on the principle that it would be difficult to supply so many millions gratuitously.

In the time of Confucius, B.C. 500, books were formed of slips of bamboo, upon which they wrote with the point of a style. About one hundred and fifty years after Christ, paper was invented, when the Chinese wrote on rolls, and formed volumes. A.D. 745, books were first bound up into leaves; and two hundred years afterwards they were multiplied by printing; so that the Chinese appear to have made early advances in civilization, whilst we only discovered the art of making paper in the eleventh, and that of printing in the fifteenth century. The mode of printing adopted by the Chinese is of the simplest character. Without expensive machinery, or a complicated process, they manage to throw off clear impressions of their books, in an expeditious manner. Stereotype, or block printing, seems to have taken the precedence of moveable types in all countries, and in China they have scarcely yet got beyond the original method. Their language consisting of a great number of characters, they have not thought it worth while to cut or cast an