Note 23 — Chapter IV

The brilliancy of the Chinese colours for painting, &c. has often been very highly extolled as being superior to the European. What surprise must it create, then, when we are informed that the colours used are of English manufacture, and the Chinese artists are eager for, and anxiously inquire after, them. This reminds me of the gross ignorance frequently displayed by our countrymen in foreign countries,—purchasing English articles abroad at a high price as foreign manufacture, and as unattainable in their native land. It was mentioned as a fact, that a person purchased an elegant London clock in a shop at Canton, at a high price, to take to England as a specimen of China manufacture. Do not we see these follies committed by our countrymen almost every day at Paris?