sometimes brought over to Europe, they are the work of artists at Canton
where, from being in the habit of copying prints and drawings, carried
thither for the purpose of being transferred to porcelain, or as
articles of commerce, they have acquired a better taste than in the
interior parts of the country. Great quantities of porcelain are sent
from the potteries to Canton perfectly white, that the purchaser may
have them painted to his own pattern: and specimens of these bear
testimony that they are no mean copyists. It has been observed,
however, that the subjects of natural history, painted by them, are
frequently incorrect; that it is no unusual thing to meet with the
flower of one plant set upon the stalk of another, and having the leaves
of a third. This may formerly have been the case, from their following
imperfect patterns, or from supposing they could improve nature; but
having found that the representations of natural objects are in more
request among foreigners, they pay a stricter attention to the subject
that may be required; and we found them indeed such scrupulous copyists,
as not only to draw the exact number of the petals, the stamina, and
pistilla of a flower, but also the very number of leaves, with the
thorns or spots on the foot-stalk that supported it. They will even
count the number of scales on a fish, and mark them out in their
representations, and it is impossible to imitate the brilliant colours
of nature more closely. I brought home several drawings of plants,
birds, and insects, that have been greatly admired for their accuracy
and close colouring; but they want that effect which the proper
application of light and shade never fails to produce. The coloured
prints of Europe that are carried out to Canton are copied there with
wonderful fidelity. But in doing this, they exercise no judgment of
their own. Every defect and blemish, original or accidental, they are
sure to copy, being mere servile imitators, and not in the least feeling
the force or the beauty of any specimen of the arts that may come before
them; for the same person who is one day employed in copying a beautiful
European print, will sit down the next to a Chinese drawing replete with
absurdity.
Whatever may be the progress of the arts in the port of Canton, they are
not likely to experience much improvement in the interior parts of the
country, or in the capital. It was the pride rather of the monarch, and
of his ministers, that made them reject the proposal of Castaglione to
establish a school for the arts, than the apprehension, as stated by the
missionaries, that the rage for painting would become so general, as to
be prejudicial to useful labour.
In a country where painting is at so low an ebb, it would be in vain to
expect much execution from the chissel. Grotesque images of ideal
beings, and monstrous distortions of nature, are sometimes seen upon the
ballustrades of bridges, and in their temples, where the niches are
filled with gigantic gods of baked clay, sometimes painted with gaudy
colours, and sometimes plastered over with gold leaf, or covered with a
coat of varnish. They are as little able to model as to draw the human
figure with any degree of correctness. In the whole empire there is not
a statue, a hewn pillar, or a column that deserves to be mentioned.
Large four-sided blocks of stone or wood are frequently erected near the
gates of cities, with inscriptions upon them, meant to perpetuate the
memory of certain distinguished characters; but they are neither objects
of grandeur nor ornament, having a much closer resemblance to a gallows
than to triumphal arches, as the missionaries, for what reason I know
not, have thought fit to call them.
The intention of these monumental erections will appear from some of
their inscriptions.
I.
_Honour granted by the Emperor._
_The grateful odour of one hundred years._
_Retirement._ _Tranquillity._
II.
_Emperor's order._
_Peace and Happiness,_
_The balm of Life._
_On a fortunate day, in the 8th month of the 50th year of the
reign of Kien-Long, this monument was erected by the
Emperor's order, in honour of Liang-tien-pe, aged
102 years._
The two following are inscriptions on monuments that have been erected
to chaste women, a description of ladies whom the Chinese consider to be
rarely met with.
III.
_Honour granted by the Emperor._
_Icy coldness._ _Hard frost._
IV.
_The Emperor's order._
_The sweet fragrance of piety and virginity._
_Sublime chastity._ _Pure morals._
The whole of their architecture, indeed, is as unsightly as unsolid;
without elegance or convenience of design, and without any settled
proportion; mean in its appearance, and clumsy in the workmanship. Their
pagodas of five, seven, and nine rounds, or roofs, are the most striking
objects; but though they appear to be the imitations or, perhaps, more
properly speaking, the models of a similar kind of pyramids found in
India, they are neither so well designed, nor so well executed: they
are, in fact, so very ill constructed that half of them, without any
marks of antiquity, appear in ruins; of these useless and whimsical
edifices His Majesty's garden at Kew exhibits a specimen, which is not
inferior in any respect to the very best I have met with in China. The
height of such structures, and the badness of the materials with which
they are usually built, contradict the notion that they assign as a
reason for the lowness of their houses, which is, that they may escape
being thrown down by earthquakes. In fact, the tent stands confessed in
all their dwellings, of which the curved roof and the wooden pillars (in
imitation of the poles) forming a colonnade round the ill-built brick
walls, clearly denote the origin; and from this original form they have
never ventured to deviate. Their temples are mostly constructed upon the
same plan, with the addition of a second, and sometimes a third roof,
one above the other. The wooden pillars that constitute the colonnade
are generally of larch fir, of no settled proportion between the length
and the diameter, and they are invariably painted red and sometimes
covered with a coat of varnish.
As custom and fashion are not the same in any two countries, it has been
contended by many that there can be no such thing as true taste. The
advocates for taste arising out of custom will say, that no solid reason
can be offered why the pillar which supports the Doric capital should be
two diameters shorter than that which sustains the Corinthian; and that
it is the habit only of seeing them thus constructed that constitutes
their propriety. Though the respective beauties of these particular
columns may, in part, be felt from the habit of observing them always
retaining a settled proportion, yet it must be allowed that, in the most
perfect works of nature, there appears a certain harmony and agreement
of one part with another, that without any settled proportion seldom
fail to please. Few people will disagree in their ideas of a handsome
tree, or an elegant flower, though there be no fixed proportion between
the trunk and the branches, the flower and the foot-stalk. Proportion,
therefore, alone, is not sufficient to constitute beauty. There must be
no stiffness, no sudden breaking off from a straight line to a curve;
but the changes should be easy, not visible in any particular part, but
running imperceptibly through the whole. Utility has also been
considered as one of the constituent parts of beauty. In the Chinese
column, labouring under an enormous mass of roof, without either base or
capital, there is neither symmetry of parts, nor ease, nor particular
utility. Nor have the large ill-shapen and unnatural figures of lions,
dragons, and serpents, grinning on the tops and corners of the roofs,
any higher pretensions to good taste, to utility, or to beauty.
"The architecture of the Chinese," says one of their encomiasts, "though
it bears no relation to that of Europe; though it has borrowed nothing
from that of the Greeks, has a certain beauty peculiar to itself." It is
indeed peculiar to itself, and the missionaries may be assured they are
the only persons who will ever discover "real palaces in the mansions of
the Emperor," or to whom, "their immensity, symmetry, and magnificence,
will announce the grandeur of the master who inhabits them."
The house of a prince, or a great officer of state, in the capital, is
not much distinguished from that of a tradesman, except by the greater
space of ground on which it stands, and by being surrounded by a high
wall. Our lodgings in Pekin were in a house of this description. The
ground plot was four hundred by three hundred feet, and it was laid out
into ten or twelve courts, some having two, some three, and others four,
tent-shaped houses, standing on stone terraces raised about three feet
above the court, which was paved with tiles. Galleries of communication,
forming colonnades of red wooden pillars, were carried from each
building and from one court to another, so that every part of the house
might be visited without exposure to the sun or the rain. The number of
wooden pillars of which the colonnades were formed was about 900. Most
of the rooms were open to the rafters of the roof; but some had a slight
ceiling of bamboo laths covered with plaster; and the ladies apartments
consisted of two stories; the upper however had no light, and was not so
good as our common attics. The floors were laid with bricks or clay. The
windows had no glass; oiled paper, or silk gauze, or pearl shell, or
horn, were used as substitutes for this article. In the corners of some
of the rooms were holes in the ground, covered over with stones or wood,
intended for fire-places, from whence the heat is conveyed, as in the
houses of ancient Rome, through flues in the floor, or in the walls, the
latter of which are generally whitened with lime made from shells and
imported from the sea coast. One room was pointed out to us as the
theatre. The stage was in the middle, and a sort of gallery was erected
in front of it. A stone room was built in the midst of a piece of water,
in imitation of a passage yacht, and one of the courts was roughened
with rocks, with points and precipices and excavations, as a
representation of nature in miniature. On the ledges of these were meant
to be placed their favourite flowers and stunted trees, for which they
are famous.
There is not a water-closet, nor a decent place of retirement in all
China. Sometimes a stick is placed over a hole in a corner, but in
general they make use of large earthen jars with narrow tops. In the
great house we occupied was a walled inclosure, with a row of small
square holes of brick-work sunk in the ground.
Next to the pagodas, the most conspicuous objects are the gates of
cities. These are generally square buildings, carried several stories
above the arched gateway and, like the temples, are covered with one or
more large projecting roofs. But the most stupendous work of this
country is the great wall that divides it from northern Tartary. It is
built exactly upon the same plan as the wall of Pekin, being a mound of
earth cased on each side with bricks or stone. The astonishing
magnitude of the fabric consists not so much in the plan of the work, as
in the immense distance of fifteen hundred miles over which it is
extended, over mountains of two and three thousand feet in height,
across deep vallies and rivers. But the elevations, plans, and sections
of this wall and its towers have been taken with such truth and accuracy
by the late Captain Parish, of the Royal Artillery, that all further
description would be superfluous. They are to be found in Sir George
Staunton's valuable account of the embassy to China.
The same Emperor, who is said to have committed the barbarous act of
destroying the works of the learned, raised this stupendous fabric,
which has no parallel in the whole world, not even in the pyramids of
Egypt, the magnitude of the largest of these containing only a very
small portion of the quantity of matter comprehended in the great wall
of China. This indeed is so enormous, that admitting, what I believe has
never been denied, its length to be fifteen hundred miles, and the
dimensions throughout pretty much the same as where it was crossed by
the British Embassy, the materials of all the dwelling-houses of England
and Scotland, supposing them to amount to one million eight hundred
thousand, and to average on the whole two thousand cubic feet of masonry
or brick-work, are barely equivalent to the bulk or solid contents of
the great wall of China. Nor are the projecting massy towers of stone
and brick included in this calculation. These alone, supposing them to
continue throughout at bow-shot distance, were calculated to contain as
much masonry and brick-work as all London. To give another idea of the
mass of matter in this stupendous fabric, it may be observed, that it is
more than sufficient to surround the circumference of the earth on two
of its great circles, with two walls, each six feet high and two feet
thick! It is to be understood, however, that in this calculation is
included the earthy part in the middle of the wall.
Turning from an object, which the great Doctor Johnson was of opinion
would be an honour to any one to say that his grandfather had seen,
another presents itself scarcely inferior in point of grandeur, and
greatly excelling it in general utility. This is what has usually been
called the imperial or grand canal, an inland navigation of such extent
and magnitude as to stand unrivalled in the history of the world. I may
safely say that, in point of magnitude, our most extensive inland
navigation of England can no more be compared to the grand trunk that
intersects China, than a park or garden fish-pond to the great lake of
Winandermere. The Chinese ascribe an antiquity to this work higher by
many centuries than to that of the great wall; but the Tartars pretend
it was first opened in the thirteenth century under the Mongul
government. The probability is, that an effeminate and shameful
administration had suffered it to fall into decay, and that the more
active Tartars caused it to undergo a thorough repair: at present it
exhibits no appearances of great antiquity. The bridges, the stone piers
of the flood-gates, the quays, and the retaining walls of the earthen
embankments are comparatively new. Whether it has originally been
constructed by Chinese or Tartars, the conception of such an
undertaking, and the manner in which it is executed, imply a degree of
science and ingenuity beyond what I suspect we should now find in the
country, either in one or the other of these people. The general surface
of the country and other favourable circumstances have contributed very
materially to assist the projector, but a great deal of skill and
management, as well as of immense labour, are conspicuous throughout the
whole work.
I shall endeavour to convey, in a few words, a general idea of the
principles on which this grand undertaking has been carried on. All the
rivers of note in China fall from the high lands of Tartary, which lie
to the northward of Thibet, crossing the plains of this empire in their
descent to the sea from west to east. The inland navigation being
carried from north to south cuts these rivers at right angles, the
smaller streams of which terminating in it afford a constant supply of
water; and the three great rivers, the _Eu-ho_ to the north, the _Yellow
River_ towards the middle, and the _Yang-tse-kiang_ to the south,
intersecting the canal, carry off the superfluous water to the sea. The
former, therefore, are the _feeders_, and the latter the _dischargers_,
of the great trunk of the canal. A number of difficulties must have
arisen in accommodating the general level of the canal to the several
levels of the feeding streams; for notwithstanding all the favourable
circumstances of the face of the country, it has been found necessary in
many places to cut down to the depth of sixty or seventy feet below the
surface; and, in others, to raise mounds of earth upon lakes and swamps
and marshy grounds, of such a length and magnitude that nothing short of
the absolute command over multitudes could have accomplished an
undertaking, whose immensity is only exceeded by the great wall. These
gigantic embankments are sometimes carried through lakes of several
miles in diameter, between which the water is forced up to a height
considerably above that of the lake; and in such situations we sometimes
observed this enormous aqueduct gliding along at the rate of three miles
an hour. Few parts of it are level: in some places it has little or no
current; one day we had it setting to the southward at the rate of one,
two, or three miles an hour, the next to the northward, and frequently
on the same day we found it stationary, and running in opposite
directions. This balancing of the level was effected by flood-gates
thrown across at certain distances to elevate or depress the height of
the water a few inches, as might appear to be necessary; and these
stoppages are simply planks sliding in grooves, that are cut into the
sides of two stone abutments, which in these places contract the canal
to the width of about thirty feet. There is not a lock nor, except
these, a single interruption to a continued navigation of six hundred
miles.
The most remarkable parts of this extraordinary work will be noticed in
a following chapter, descriptive of our journey through the empire.
Over this main trunk, and most of the other canals and rivers, are a
great variety of bridges, some with arches that are pointed not unlike
the gothic, some semicircular, and others shaped like a horse-shoe: some
have the piers of such an extraordinary height that the largest vessels,
of two hundred tons, sail under them without striking their masts. Some
of their bridges, of three, five, and seven arches[21], that cross the
canal, are extremely light and beautiful to the eye, but the plan on
which they are usually constructed does not imply much strength. Each
stone, from five to ten feet in length, is cut so as to form a segment
of the arch, and as, in such cases, there is no key-stone, ribs of wood
fitted to the convexity of the arch are bolted through the stones by
iron bars, fixed fast into the solid parts of the bridge. Sometimes,
however, they are without wood, and the curved stones are morticed into
long transverse blocks of stone, as in the annexed plate, which was
drawn with great accuracy by Mr. Alexander.
[21] A bridge with ninety-one arches will be noticed in a subsequent
chapter.
In this Plate,
No. 1. Are stones cut to the curve of the arch 10 feet long.
2. An immense stone, 2 feet square, of the whole
depth of the arch.
3. Curved stones, 7 feet long.
4. Ditto, 5 feet.
5. Ditto, 3-1/2 feet.
6. Ditto, 3 feet.
7. Ditto, 3 feet.
8.8. Stones similar to No. 2. being each one entire
piece running through the bridge, and intended,
it would seem, to bind the fabric together as the
pillars 9.9. are morticed into them.
[Illustration: _Construction of the Arch of a_ CHINESE BRIDGE
_Pub. May 10^th., 1804, by Cadell, & Davies Strand._
_Neele sc. 352, Strand._]
There are, however, other arches wherein the stones are smaller and
pointed to a centre as in ours. I have understood from the late
Captain Parish, that no masonry could be superior to that of the great
wall, and that all the arched and vaulted work in the old towers was
exceedingly well turned. This being the case, we may probably be not far
amiss in allowing the Chinese to have employed this useful and
ornamental part of architecture before it was known to the Greeks and
the Romans. Neither the Egyptians nor the Persians appear at any time to
have applied it in their buildings. The ruins of Thebes and of
Persepolis have no arches, nor have those of Balbec and Palmyra; nor do
they seem to have been much used in the magnificent buildings of the
Romans antecedent to the time of Augustus. The grand and elegant columns
of all these nations were connected by straight architraves of stone, of
dimensions not inferior to the columns themselves. In the Hindoo
excavations are arches cut out of the solid mountain; but when loose
stones were employed, and a building was intended to be superstructed on
columns, the stones above the capitals were overlaid like inverted
steps, till they met in a point in the middle above the two columns,
appearing at a little distance exactly like the gothic arch, of which
this might have given the first idea. If then the antiquity be admitted
which the Chinese ascribe to the building of the great wall, and no
reason but a negative one, the silence of Marco Polo, has been offered
against it (an objection easily refuted), they have a claim to the
invention of the arch founded on no unsolid grounds.
The cemeteries, or repositories of the dead, exhibit a much greater
variety of monumental architecture than the dwellings of the living can
boast of. Some indeed deposit the remains of their ancestors in houses
that differ in nothing from those they inhabited while living, except in
their diminutive size; others prefer a square vault, ornamented in such
a manner as fancy may suggest; some make choice of a hexagon to cover
the deceased, and others of an octagon. The round, the triangular, the
square, and multangular column, is indifferently raised over the grave
of a Chinese; but the most common form of a monument to the remains of
persons of rank consists in three terraces, one above another, inclosed
by circular walls. The door or entrance of the vault is in the centre of
the uppermost terrace, covered with an appropriate inscription; and
figures of slaves and horses and cattle, with other creatures that, when
living, were subservient to them and added to their pleasures, are
employed after their death to decorate the terraces of their tombs.
"Quæ gratia currûm
Armorumque fuit vivis, quæ cura nitentes
Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos."
Virgil, Æneid vi.
"Those pleasing cares the heroes felt, alive,
For chariots, steeds, and arms, in death survive."
Pitt.
It may be considered as superfluous, after what has been said, to
observe, that no branch of natural philosophy is made a study, or a
pursuit in China. The practical application of some of the most obvious
effects produced by natural causes could not escape the observation of a
people who had, at an early period, attained so high a degree of
civilization, but, satisfied with the practical part, they pushed their
enquiries no farther. Of pneumatics, hydrostatics, electricity, and
magnetism, they may be said to have little or no knowledge; and their
optics extend not beyond the making of convex and concave lenses of rock
crystal to assist the sight in magnifying, or throwing more rays upon,
small objects and, by collecting to a focus the rays of the sun, to set
fire to combustible substances. These lenses are cut with a saw and
afterwards polished, the powder of crystal being used in both
operations. To polish diamonds they make use of the powder of adamantine
spar, or the corundum stone. In cutting different kinds of stone into
groups of figures, houses, mountains, and sometimes into whole
landscapes, they discover more of persevering labour, of a determination
to subdue difficulties, which were not worth the subduing, than real
ingenuity. Among the many remarkable instances of this kind of labour,
there is one in the possession of the Right Honourable Charles Greville,
that deserves to be noticed. It is a group of well formed, excavated,
and highly ornamented bottles, covered with foliage and figures, raised
in the manner of the antique _Cameos_, with moveable ring-handles,
standing on a base or pedestal, the whole cut out of one solid block of
clear rock crystal. Yet this laborious trifle was probably sold for a
few dollars in China. It was bought in London for about thirty pounds,
where it could not have been made for many times that sum, if, indeed,
it could have been made at all. All their spectacles that I have seen
were crystal set in horn, tortoise-shell, or ivory. The single
microscope is in common use, but they have never hit upon the effect of
approximating objects by combining two or more lenses, a discovery
indeed to which in Europe we are more indebted to chance than to the
result of scientific enquiry. I observed at _Yuen-min-yuen_ a rude kind
of magic lantern, and a camera obscura, neither of which, although
evidently of Chinese workmanship, appeared to wear the marks of a
national invention. I should rather conclude, that they were part of
those striking and curious experiments which the early Jesuits displayed
at court, in order to astonish the Emperor with their profound skill,
and raise their reputation as men of learning. Of the _ombres Chinoises_
they may, perhaps, claim the invention, and in pyrotechny their
ingenuity may be reckoned much superior to any thing which has hitherto
been exhibited in that art in Europe.