Show tiie THE CHINESE LANGUAGE S r john bowring the late english commissioner to china in a lecture recently delivered in glasgow made the assertion that the lexicon of the chinese langy language age consisted of seventy volumes dr julien professor of the chinese at the college of france has written a letter to th tha the Constitution nel to point out sir johns mistake ile he states that in reality the imperial dictionary of the emperor khang hihns only of thirty two volumes not thicker than the little finger and containing only characters this dictionary is the one all european students use in acquiring C chinese h I 1 nese and he says that a knowledge of about one tenth of these is sufficient to enable chines chinesa books to be understood ile he adv advances andes th the rather staiti startling proposition position that the chinese is as clear as the t easiest est of modern languages |