Wuex the traveller who visits Peking studies the Great Bell, which he sees on his way to the Summer Palace, he involuntarily admires the beauty of its workmanship, In addition to its being the largest hung bell in the world, it is covered with characters all smoothly cut and elegantly formed. This piece of moulded bronze was cast by Chinese workmen 450 years ago. About. the same time was erected at the tomb of the Emperor who bears the name of Yung-lo, a large and handsome marble gateway or pallor. The tiled roof which the Chinese erect on the better class of walls is in this gateway imitated in marble which is cut so as to reproduce every complicated detail of an actual roof. This fine monument of Chinese skill has five openings instead of three the usual number, and is the largest pai low in the empire. It has borne the winter winds and summer rains of more than four centuries and stands uninjured. In Peking itself on the eastern Wall the Observatory presents a striking example of the mechanical skill of the Chinese workmen under the Mongols and in the reign of the Emperor Kang-(hi, Chinese workmen cast their first bronze astrolabes for the use and under the direction of the imperial astronomers so far as we know in the first century. Before this the astronomers made use of wooden or marble instruments. From thefirstcentury they always j had bronze astrolabes. Those now in Peking date from the Mongol dynasty, aid from the time of the able missionary Verbiest whose name is inscribed on the celestial globe. The mechanical
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.