Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/29

 of its fabulous and traditionary periods, is still very ancient; the Chinese must have branched off from the great human family immediately after the dispersion, and travelling to the farther east, settled down on the borders of the Yellow River, coeval with the establishment of the Babylonian and Egyptian monarchies. The mention made in their early history of the draining of the land, as one of the first acts of the primitive rulers of China, and the allusion to the discovery of wine about the same period, shew that their first kings must have synchronized with the immediate descendants of Noah; and the recorded fact that a seven years' famine took place in China nearly coeval with that of Egypt proves that their chronicles are entitled to some degree of credit. Thus, ere Rome was founded, or Troy was taken—before Thebes or Nineveh were erected into kingdoms—China was a settled state, under a regular form of government; with customs and institutions, similar in many respects to those which it possesses now.

From that time to this, revolutions and wars have frequently occurred; the country has been exposed to foreign invasion, and torn by intestine commotion; dynasties have changed, and the people are even now subject to a Tartar yoke,—yet China is China still. Her language and her customs remain unaltered; and the genius and spirit of the people are the same they were in the patriarchal age. No nation has undergone less change, or been less affected from without; and they seem to have grown up as distinct from the rest of mankind as if they had been the inhabitants of another planet; retaining all their peculiarities just