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mention, were published at the sole expense of the Honourable East-India Company, which thus con- tributed about £15,000 to the infant cause of Chinese philology.
Dr. Morrison being in England in 1825, the introduction of the study of Chinese into one or both of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, was agitated by him in connexion with a Committee in London, of which the late Sir George Stauntou and Sir Robert Harry Inglis were members. From causes with which I am not acquainted, this earliest attempt to have the claims of Chinese recognized in this country failed. It led, however, to the forma- tion of a Language Institution' in London, where Dr. Morrison taught Chinese for several months to a class of thirteen students; but this came to a close in 1828. He had returned to China, and the study of Chinese in England lay dormant till after his death in 1834. A committee of gentlemen then purchased his Chinese library, and in 1838 they made it over to the London University College, on condition that the Council should constitute a pro- fessorship of the Chinese Language and Literature, to be continued for at least five years at a salary of £60 per annum. This was the Chair that was filled by the Rev. Samuel Kidd, who was well qualified for the position. He retired from it in 1842, and it was not occupied by any other till 1873. The want of students has necessitated its being left vacant again.
In 1846, another Chinese Chair was founded in London, at King's College; and though also too slenderly endowed, it has been filled continuously by Mr. Fearon, Rev. J. Summers, and Mr. Robert
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K. Douglas, its present very able occupant. I am sorry to say that the resort of students to it has been small.
the
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Even if Dr. Morrison and his friends had obtained the establishment of a Chair in Oxford or Cambridge in 1825, England would have been forestalled by France in the .encouragement of Chinese studies. Two things led to their assiduous cultivation there: first, the interest taken by the rulers of France in progress of Roman Catholic missions in China; and next, the genius and inquiring spirit of French scholars. For more than a century, the missionaries had transmitted in manuscript to the College of France the most important results of their studies and by the help of these Etienne Fourmont pro- duced, in 1737, his Meditationes Sinica, and five years later his Grammatica Sinica,-Works which gave the first impulse to the study of Chinese in Europe. Early in the present century, the language attracted the attention of Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat; and in 1814 a Chinese professorship was constituted and conferred on him,-of all men then in Europe, out of Russia, the best qualified for such a Chair. On his death in 1832, Rémusat was succeeded by the late Stanislas Julien, who had commenced the study of Chinese under him in 1823, and soon vindicated for himself a foremost place among Sinologists. This Chair is now filled by the Marquis d'Hervey de St. Denys, one of Julien's, pupils. But in addition to it there is in Paris, L'Ecole Speciale des Langues Orientales Vivantes, the teaching in which embraces Chinese, Japanese, Annamese, Hin- dustani, Persian, Turkish, and other eastern lan- guages. Each department is conducted by a French
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