Page:The Chinese Repository - Volume 01.djvu/263

THE

CHINESE REPOSITORY.

 

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Vol. I.—November, 1832.—No. 7.

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REVIEW.

Memoirs and remarks, geographical, historical, topographical, physical, natural, astronomical, mechanical, military, mercantile, political, and ecclesiastical, made in above ten year's travels through the Empire of China. By Lewis Le Comte, jesuit; confessor to the duchess of Burgundy, and one of the French king's mathematicians. A new translation from the best Paris edition. 1 Vol. pp. 536. London, MDCCXXXVII.

 

Time is not the destroyer of truth. Some parts of Le Comte's book are of little value now,—as they were, indeed, when he wrote them,—being nothing more than complimentary addresses to ministers of state, and to lords and ladies of rank, to whom he 'communicated himself,' in a series of letters, which constitute the work before us: other parts of it, such for example, as that which contains a division of the empire into "fifteen provinces," are not applicable to the present condition of the country: much of the work, however, is exact narration of what now exists; and the period of almost a century and a half, since which time it was composed, has taken nothing from many of its most beautiful and correct descriptions of persons, places, and things which belong to the