Glimpses of the Wonderful (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Glimpses of the Wonderful

The Simple truth is sufficiently wonderful without re sorting to fable; for strange indeed it is that a mighty empire should have flourished, whose very name was for centuries a mystery to the nations of the West, and whose existence was sometimes treated as a chimera.

For more than twenty centuries China appears to have attained nearly the same degree of civilization and ad vancement in arts, sciences, and government which now SO favorably distinguish it from other Asiatic nations; and there it appears to have been nearly stationary. While the outside barbarians of the West have been struggling, century after century, out of the darkness and ignorance and brutality of their forefathers, the Chinese, content with the wisdom, the discoveries, and the pre cepts that so justly distinguished the remote antiquity of their empire, have hitherto shared but little in the mighty changes, whether for good or evil, which have passed over the face of the earth.

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