Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/180

156 running hand; assimilating to our uncial, black, Grecian, Roman, Italic, and manuscript forms of writing. The ancient form shews, in some measure, how the Chinese characters were constructed; for in it we find various objects delineated as they appear in nature. The seal character, as it is called, because found engraven on seals, differs from the usual form in being entirely composed of horizontal and perpendicular strokes, without a single oblique or circular mark belonging to it; resembling in some degree the arbitrary marks used among the Egyptians. The regular and exact form is that met with in all Chinese books, from which the written form differs, as much as our Italic from our Roman letters. The running hand seems to have been invented for the purpose of expediting business; and by the saving of strokes, and the blending of characters, enables the transcriber to get over a great deal of work in a little time. Such productions are not easily decyphered, and yet the Chinese are so fond of this ready, and, in their opinion, graceful mode of writing, that they frequently hang up specimens of penmanship in the most abbreviated form, as ornaments to their shops and parlours. The Chinese writers are generally so practiced in the use of the pencil, that they run down a column with the utmost rapidity, and would transcribe any given quantity of matter as soon as the most skilful copyist in England.

It has been suggested, that the Chinese mode of writing has been derived from Egypt; and considering that the Chinese and Egyptians proceeded from the same stock, were civilized at a very early period, and resembled each other in their wants and resources, it is not be wondered at, that they should adopt the same