Julien, STANISLAS AIGNAN, a great French Sinologue, was born at Orleans, 19th September 1799, and became at twenty-one an assistant-professor at the Collège de France. Ere long, under Abel Rémusat, he gave himself with such zeal to the study of Chinese that he mastered its difficulties in less than a year, and actually executed a Latin translation of the philosopher Mencius (1824-
26). From that time his labours were directed with uninterrupted assiduity to the languages and literature of the far East. Ancient and modern Chinese, Manchu, Sanskrit, and the Mongolian tongues were alike familiar to him; and at the same time he knew almost all the European languages. He succeeded Rémusat in 1832 at the Collège de France, became in 1839 keeper of the Royal Library, and in 1854 head of the Collège Impériale. He was also conservator of the Bibliothèque Impériale, and was specially charged with the oversight of the Chinese department. He died February 14, 1873. Julien gave admirable French versions of specimens of the Chinese drama in his Hoei-lan-ki ('the Circle of Chalk,' 1832) and his Tchao-chi-kou-eul ('the Chinese Orphan,' 1834); of Chinese romances, by his Blanche et Bleu (1834), Les deux Cousines (1863); and Avadānas, a collection of Indian novels (1859). He was also the first to make Chinese poetry intelligible. But a more valuable service still than these was his translating the great manuals of Chinese religion and philosophy, such as the Livre des Récompenses et des Peines (1835), in which are contained the doctrines of Tao-se; the Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu (1841) by Lao-tse, written in the 6th century B.C., and forming the oldest and most illustrious monument of Chinese philosophy; and above all, the Histoire de la Vie d'Houen-Tsang et de ses Voyages (1852), a work of immense importance for the earlier history and geography of India, and the knowledge of Buddhism. But not content with these brilliant labours, Julien translated Chinese treatises on silk-culture and the manufacture of porcelain. His splendid Syntaxe Nouvelle de la Langue Chinoise appeared 1869-70.