Page:The History of Ink.djvu/77

Rh given to other and higher spirits occasion to reflect."

But we are loth to leave this subject (which has grown into our affections as we have dwelt upon it) without giving a blow or a kick to one monstrous absurdity which has prevailed among the learned, "falsely so-called,"—from the time when the Jesuits returned from China with their "edifying and curious" tales about the huge antiquity of all the arts and some of the sciences of civilization among the people of what they called the "Celestial Empire,"—a term wholly unknown to the Chinese, in any form or variation of expression.

The simple facts are that—the Chinese derived their knowledge of (of writing with a colored liquid) from Europe. So did they obtain their knowledge of the art of printing, carried to them by Venetian travellers "overland," just at the moment before the clumsy engraved wood-blocks were superseded by the moveable types of Gansefleisch or Gutenberg. So was it with the Mariner's Compass, the manufacture of gunpowder, and all their boasted "inventions,"—among which may lie included their calculation of eclipses backward through fabulous cycles of centuries, and the morals of Confucius or Kong-foo-