place them in a more advantageous position. They separated them piece by piece, and put them again together in a short time without difficulty or mistake, the whole consisting of many thousand minute pieces, though they had never seen anything of the kind before. Another Chinese cut a narrow slip from the edge of a curved plate of glass, in order to supply the place of one belonging to the dome of the Planetarium, which had been broken in the carriage. The English mechanics belonging to the embassy had in vain attempted to cut the glass according to this curved line, with the assistance of a diamond. The native workman did not show his method; but it was said that he succeeded by first drawing the point of a heated iron across the surface to be divided.” *

As relates to the fine arts, or those which minister rather to the pleasures than to the wants of mankind, it becomes necessary to make some allowances for the peculiarities of national taste, which has generally been admitted to be the most conventional and capricious thing in the world, being determined by the infinite varieties of national character, models, and associations. The arts of drawing and painting do not rank so high among the Chinese as among ourselves in Europe, and, having therefore met with less encouragement, they may be expected to have made less progress. In works that do not require a scientific adherence to the rules of perspective they are sometimes very successful. They paint insects, birds, fruits, and flowers, very beautifully, and nothing can exceed the splendour and variety of their colours. Native artists have often been employed at Canton and Macao, by English naturalists, in delineating various specimens in botany and zoology; and under proper direction they

* Embassy, vol. ii. p. 288.

have been found capable of giving a correct and scientific representation of the various objects, as well as a brilliant and well-coloured drawing. One thing in our European art they do not fully enter into, which is shading; and they positively object to the introduction of shadows in painting. Mr. Barrow states, "When several portraits by the best European artists, intended as presents for the emperor, were exposed to view, the mandarins, observing the variety of tints occasioned by the light and shade, asked whether the originals had the right and left sides of the figure of different colours? They considered the shadow of the nose as a great imperfection in the figure, and some supposed it to have been placed there by accident."

Though the Chinese certainly do not practise the art of perspective in its correctness, or according to any regular rules, it would be a mistake to suppose that it is always entirely neglected. Their artists, at Canton at least, have taken hints from European performances in this respect, and their drawings by the eye are often tolerably correct as to perspective, though light and shade are still neglected. The woodcuts in Chinese books are generally executed almost entirely in outline, which is occasionally very spirited as well as faithful. The drawings which they chiefly value among themselves are in water-colours and Indian ink, sketched in a very slight manner upon either fine paper or silk. A favourite subject with them is the bamboo, which is represented in all the different stages of its growth, from the tender shoot, just appearing above the earth (when they use it for food, as we do asparagus), up to the period of its producing its grass-like flowers and seeds.

In connexion with drawing and the imitative arts, we may observe that the Chinese style of ornamental garden

ing, and of laying out pleasure-grounds, has been very much overdrawn by Sir William Chambers, in an essay on that subject, which may be considered quite as a work of imagination in itself. Mr. Barrow, however, who resided for a considerable time at Yuen-ming-yuen, "the garden of perpetual brightness," which is an extensive pleasure-ground of the emperor, lying north-west of Peking, and greatly exceeding Richmond Park in extent, has given a favourable account of their taste in this department of the arts. "The grand and agreeable parts of nature (he observes) were separated, connected, or arranged in so judicious a manner as to compose one whole, in which there was no inconsistency or unmeaning jumble of objects, but such an order and proportion as generally prevail in scenes entirely natural. No round or oval, square or oblong lawns, with the grass shorn off close to the roots, were to be found anywhere in those grounds. The Chinese are particularly expert in magnifying the real dimensions of a piece of land, by a proper disposition of the objects intended to embellish its surface. For this purpose tall and luxuriant trees of the deepest green were planted in the foreground, from whence the view was to be taken; whilst those in the distance gradually diminished in size and depth of colouring; and in general the ground was terminated by broken and irregular clumps of trees, whose foliage was varied, as well by the different species of trees in the group, as by the different times of the year in which they were in vigour; and oftentimes the vegetation was apparently old and stunted, making with difficulty its way through the clefts of rocks, either originally found, or designedly collected upon the spot.

"The effect of intricacy and concealment seemed also. to be well understood by the Chinese. At Yuen-ming

yuen a slight wall was made to convey the idea of a magnificent building, when seen at a certain distance through the branches of a thicket. Sheets of made water, instead of being surrounded by sloping banks, like the glacis of a fortification, were occasionally hemmed in by artificial rocks, seemingly indigenous to the soil. The only circumstance which militated against the picturesque in the landscape of the Chinese was the formal shape and glaring colouring of their buildings. Their undulating roofs are, however, an exception to the first part of the charge, and their projection throws a softening shadow upon the supporting colonnade. Some of those high towers which Europeans call pagodas are well-adapted objects for vistas, and are accordingly for the most part placed on elevated situations."

In sculpture, understood as the art of cutting stone into imitative forms of living objects, the Chinese are extremely defective. Their backwardness in this, as well as in other branches of the fine arts, has been justly ascribed to the little communication they have had with other nations, and the want of encouragement at home, founded on the policy and practice of discountenancing luxury and promoting labour, particularly that which is employed in producing food for man. Their sculptured figures in stone are altogether uncouth in form and proportion; but their deficiency in this respect is in some degree made up by a very considerable share of skill in modelling with soft materials. For this reason it is that their gods are never represented in stone, but in modelled clay. No great anatomical skill is called for on these occasions, as the figures are always pretty fully clothed, and exhibit no such specimens of nudity as abound in the Grecian Pantheon. Still the drapery is generally executed with remarkable truth and effect, and this feature often drew the

attention of those who composed our embassies, in their visits to the various temples which occurred on the route.

It remains only to say a few words relative to the Chinese art of music. On this point Mr. Hüttner, who was attached to Lord Macartney's mission, considered that "their gamut was such as Europeans would call imperfect, their keys being inconsistent, that is, wandering from flats to sharps, and inversely, except when directed by a bell struck to sound the proper notes. The Chinese, in playing on instruments, discovered no knowledge of semitones, nor did they seem to have any idea of counterpoint, or parts in music. There was always one melody, however great the number of performers; though, in a few instances, some of the instruments played in the lower octave, while the rest continued in the upper, and thus approached to harmony." Their instruments are mostly tuned in unison, and they have little or no idea of accompaniments. The antiquity of music in China is proved by its being frequently mentioned by Confucius himself, and the encouragement which he gives to its cultivation. might have been expected, in the course of time, to produce something better than the imperfect art which now exists there. They have certain characters to express the name of every note in their very limited scale. These they use in writing down their airs; but whether this mode of notation is indigenous, or whether they obtained it from the Jesuits, is doubtful. It is indeed stated that the Emperor Kâng-hy was much surprised when P. Pereira pricked down the Chinese tunes as they were played, and repeated them afterwards.

Their instruments are very numerous, consisting of different species of lutes and guitars; several flutes and other wind instruments; a squeaking fiddle with three strings ; a sort of harmonicon of wires, touched with two slender

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