CO129-180 - Public Offices & Others - 1877 — Page 451

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other languages we can only deal with their root names; we have nothing to do with the metamor phoses of those roots. Given, however, the root names of Chinese, as exhibited in its phonetics, and the root words of the Aryan and other languages, there will be found, so far as I can at present judge, an amount of agreement between them sufficient to justify the belief that the fathers of all their different races sat or lay around the same hearth, and had oral communication with one another. Let the in- quiry, however, be prosecuted without reference to this or any other foregone conclusion.

It is only ten years since serious research on this subject took its rise with a treatise published by Mr. Chalmers, of Canton, on the Origin of the Chinese 'an attempt to trace the connexion of the Chinese with Western nations in their religion, superstitions, arts, languages, and traditions.' The same subject was at the same time engaging the attention of Dr. Edkins, in Peking, and in 1871 there appeared his work China's place in Philology; an attempt to show that the languages of Europe and Asia have a common origin. So great a theme was not to be wrought out on the first attempt and carried to a decisive conclusion; but he did much to clear the way for its successful treatment by determining the ancient pronunciation of Chinese words, and showing how it is possible to restore the language to the form it had when the characters began to be made;-I will not say how long ago. Other scholars, as Professor Schlegel of Leyden, have pursued the subject. In elaborating this, as in the other department of the analysis of the language, the maxim for each inquirer must be Festina lente.

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I have thus endeavoured to give you some of the reasons for the constituting of a Chinese Chair at Oxford; reasons springing from our relations with China, political, religious, and commercial, and reasons springing from the functions of a university in the pursuit of truth and the work of education.

I would almost venture to hope that the event may find a response even in China itself. The most satisfactory proof that the Chinese Government is waking from the sleep and bursting the shackles of ages, and rousing itself to put an end to the national isolation, is afforded by the fact that there are now about a hundred young men sent by it in the United States, to remain there for fifteen years, first to acquire the English language, then to learn various sciences and professions, and finally to return to China and be employed in the public service as the government shall direct. I made the voyage

with the first instalment of those lads from China to San Francisco in 1873, and know well the Chinese gentlemen who have been the chief promoters of the scheme. I would fain hope that as a result from the appointment of this Chair, and the interest thereby shown to be cherished in their country and language, some of the leading minds in China may be stirred to promote the sending to England, as well as to the United States, companies of their young country- men, to prosecute, here or elsewhere, general studies, and then to return and diffuse the knowledge which they have acquired, using their influence also to maintain sentiments of friendship between their own country and Great Britain. So shall the Chair prove, not merely, in the words of toy opening sentence, an important epoch in the history of the science of

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