The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions,
histories, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, that to me the vast age
of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A
young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen,
though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder
at the mystic sublimity of _castes_ that have flowed apart, and refused
to mix, through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to
be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much
to these feelings that southern Asia is, and has been for thousands of
years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great
_officina gentium_. Man is a weed in those regions. The vast empires
also in which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give
a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or
images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of
southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and
the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy placed between us by
feelings deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics or
brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say or have time to
say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable
horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures
impressed upon me.
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