The complete destruction by fire of the two main courts of the Empress Dowayer's Winter Palace will, it is to be hoped, lead people to reflect a little. In the first' place that it is not safe indiscriminately to run stove pipes through Chinese roofs, and necessarily in close juxtaposition to the wooden pillars on which those roofs rest. These out-jutting stove-pipes were all an American lady friend seemed able to see on that island straight out of a Fairy Tale, on which the Emperor Kuang Hsii was confined after the coup d'état of 1898, the drawbridge connecting it with the delightful shores of the lake being then drawn up. It seems to consist of pavilions, and summer houses, and rockeries, and bridges and petrified trees, and bits of garden all grouped together in a kaleidoscopic picture of peacock greens and blues and gold and red. I was in an ecstasy but for my friend's reiterated: "Oh, look at those stove pipes Shall we next hear of poor Kuang Hsii's gilded palace prison as burnt? The second thought is that to retain the mattings stretched over the houses in summer, together with the tall and complex network of bamboo supports put up for protection from the summer sun, and then light up European stores and cook great dinners underneath renders it merely a matter of time when a conflagration must occur. It is surely usual to remove these mat sunshades and their bamboo supports before the season for fires begins. We certainly always do so in Szechuan. But the Germans are new to China, its coal, that so often gives off poisonous fumes, its violent alternations of climate, Let us hope no more of their noblest men may be sacrificed to. their ignorance Though certainly I should be sorry to try to live through a China summer in the rows of low one-storeyed barracks, closely facing one another, they have prepared for their unacclimatised and very young-looking soldiers.
But with a sigh for those soldiers' suf-forings I wish to cal} attention to a matter that concerns all nations. Behind the 20-it.
igh porcelain Dragon Sercen, one of the most beautiful things in Peking, must once have been a building worthy of that row of porcelain dragons standing out against the soft bright azure of the ground work tiles in high relief, old gold, dull red, cream, deep blue, then over again till old: gold once more. Now there is but a scene of utter, frantic devastation, people say caused by fire. And now that the E press's apartments are gone in like fashion, and the most beautiful wood cai in the world is left to memory and imagina-jon alone, is it not time for us all to revoice a little in what we have, I think, been too ready to condemn? If the Field-'Marshal von Waldersee had been a little less high-minded, and had at once st those rooms of that wondrous carving, packing it off to Berlin, people would all exclaimed, but after all it might not have been for ever lost to the world. The things that have been—removed, are still somewhere. It is because I was convinced that the things that now are in Peking cannot ' remain there, that I hurried to enrich any memory by a sight of them ist they exist. What with Boxers, what with the poor Chinese of the neighhourhood seizing an opportunity and rushing in, and stripping for instance the Chihli Court of the Tribunal of Punishments of all its table-cloths and cushions, and decorations, as we were told on the spo demolishing cell after cell in row beyond row of the Examination halls, and everywhere carrying out to the bone, as it were, any work of devastation begun by others! What with troops of many nations crammed into very unsuitable' buildings very often devoid' of all the things they have been accustomed to regard as necessaries, what with globe-trotters all intent on carry ing away something, can we expect art treasures to remain safe among the streets and streets of ruined buildings, churches, houses, banks, legations, over all of which blows and settles the all-penetrating very bitter-tasting Peking dust The treasures of the Hanlin College are all burnt we are told—not oven one brick remains upon another there—not one serap even of paper could I find. The records of the College of History I was told, but I still cherish some fond doubts upon the subject, are gone, whereas the priceless mountain of jade from the Summer Palace, the exquisite porcelain vase of which but one piece even approximating to it exists in the world, together with other masterpieces innumerable, are safe—safe for all of us to see in one way or another—in a Legation drawing-room! And is it not better so? Though I quite fail to understand why it is right and fitting that dra ing-room and others likewise should be crowded with Chinese chef d'eeuvres, boug at nominal prices—and no one should be angry—and yet everyone is angry with the missionaries, who sold some of them at these nominal prices out of the ducal palaces assigned to them and gave the proceeds to sustain the Chinese refugees dependent upon them, thus keeping nothing for themselves neither the priceless treasures nominal prices given for them, ha deed nothing out of the whole affair but the bother of it, and now it seems obloquy. Be it understood I do not in the least wish to cast discredit upon the happy purchaser of works of art it joy to me just to see. But I fail to undarstand why the man who imply passed the things along, Monsei other, by advice of dishonoured, whilst the happy buyer and possessor in official position is held to have acted worthily. And oh! what beautiful things be has got! In any case had the carvings of the Empress's palaceheen packed to Europe, or put into a European house, they would still be with us, Now with European fires and usages introduced into a Chinese palace we have to Inment the loss not only of the partition screens between the rooms of Cantonese blackwood carved a jour, and rather over five inches thick, but of those behind the dais with the two thrones, one of Imperial yellow, one lower and ro-mier of red Incquer worked again jour. 'Thera was a similar carving over what I took to have been the Empress' bedroom. Perhaps some Chinese can tell us where and when it was made. Nowhere have I ever seen even the least little bit that in any wise resembled it, It was of brown wood, not camphor think, because the palace where I had the good fortune to tay there was a doorway with screen carved all round it, which scented the whole house with a soft, deli: cious odour. I discerned none in the Empress's palace, and half thought the wood might be Cantonese blackwood before it is stained black, when it rather resemblea old oak. But the peculiarity was the mode of carving. Tt was us if n solid curtain of wood had hung from the collin and somewhat drawn back by & cord only there was no cord, and then in irregular bands, that wandered somewhat up and down ever us irregular x3 possible consistent h their having something the nature of bands, worked vaguely into mountain land. scapes, the wood being gnarled and chipped or weathered by wind and water into some strange weird resemblance to. out. jutting spurs and valleys, Then above this strange rough band would come another slanting here and there, but carved n; nto the life-siz~ and quite lifecti mblance of a row of orchids, Then again above this would come another of the roughly hewn bands of wood, and so But this description would-lead people to think that bands of solid wood must have weighed down those carved through. They were all joined together solidly at the inner side, and to a less degree at the outer edge. Nor does a mere word description convey more than an idea of the original, over which I could better fancy dreaming away a summer afternoon ever and anon discovering some fresh freak of fancy than over any piece of carving the world has yet shown me.
And now it is all ashes, together with the beautiful Tientsin carpet of Imperial yellow and intersecting dragons forming the pattern across the whole, and the k'angs placed on either side of the door in the windows, so that the brilliant yellow brocade ctishions upon them, again dragon-decorated, suggested great dee window seats inviting to sit down " and tell sad stories of the death of kings."
May Heaven protect the old Palace, which we call the Forbidden City, where the threefold entrance gates, the vast courtyards and long approaches must have made every Chinese soul sink into its boots, long before, prostrate on the ground, he attained even the dimmest glimpse of the Son of Heaven seated far off upon his throne within the comparatively dimly lighted great Audience Hall May it protect that most exquisite of all the shrines, standing, dim and unrestored,—between the brilliant Temple of the New Year with its well-known three fold roofs, and the austere white marble roofless Altar of Heaven, the Temple of the Memorial Tablets All whose deep blue walls and roofs are of the purest white porcelain within, and whose roof-curve alone is consummate and ineffable, a curve to fill the heart with longing for something that could never be said—too perfect almost to look upon!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.