These Palace, treasures so recently exhibited to the public recall the wonderful treasures which have been shown for ten years in the Government Museum located in the Wu Ying Tien PRIME) and Wen Hua Tien (3c jin). Visitors passing through this "museum on a hurried visit are apt to overlook or under-appreciate- many of its greatest treasures. After having looked at the porcelain and pottery in the main hall of the Wu Ying Tien and many of the lesser treasures in the hall at the rea one is apt to be too tired to appreciate properly the wonderful collection of ancient bronzes which are located in the last room that is visited. This collection of bronzes in variety and quality is perhaps the most _valuable of all the art remains of the ancient world. There are vessels made more than two thousand years before the Christian era, others of the two next millennia, These were contemporary with the best of Egypt and Greece. In the absence of a catalogue imagination must be drawn upon and the mind allowed to wander back to generations of men of whom these bronze vessels are the only historical remains. The cloisonne, porcelains, inks, furniture, carvings, textiles, seen in the first part of the journey through the Museum represent a type of civilization more or less familiar to all visitor but these bronzes carry us to an age s0 different from our own that we are obliged to use our imagination in picturing for ourselves the life in which these were used, or else to pass them by as of no interest to us, There is an impression that both the old Palaea and the Government Museum have lost their best treasures during recent years, This is incorrect. Ha ing had an intimate association with the Government" Museum' from. the time when the treasures of the Mukden and Jehol palaces were brought. to Peking preparatory to the opening of a museum, own to the present J have: hiad. free access to all the treasures. of the 1
Se Peking, the store-house of all the best that remains of China's ancient art treasures, still bravely clings, through property and rebellion, to the remnants of the wealth set aside and treasured by the rulers ofs bygone dynasties. The real wealth of Peking's art treasures lies not in the prices the curio hunters offer, but in their associations with the misty, traditional past and what they stand for in the factory of China, Museum, to those not on exhibition as well as to those which the public can see in the cases. On several acc sions I have heard that such and such things have been stolen from the Museum and were seen on sale in such and such shops. Upon investigation these things that were supposed to have been stolen have been brought out from the storeroom and shown to me. It is not right or fair to suspect that because articles once seen in the cases are no longer there and that articles similar to them are exposed in shops for sale that therefore the Museum had been robbed. Shopkeepers are clever enough to sell their goods to the unwary on the strength of the statement that they came from the Museum and purchasers without shame as to the purchase of stolen goods fall into the trap and pay high prices for articles which are only of ordinary commercial interest. I have heard several times of objects purchased in shops which are said to have come from the Government Museum but in no instance up to the present have I found the claim justified. Not more, than a quarter or a fifth of the things belonging to the Museum can be exhibited at one time so that treasures seen on one visit may not be on exhibition the next time a visit is paid. The public may be assured that the Museum treasures remain intact.
Conditions on, the other hand have been different in the part of the Palace reserved for the residence of the Emperor until last year. Here the custom was followed throughout the Manchu dynasty of presenting valuable articles to princes, princesses. and high officials on the occasion of Imperial birthday or, marriage celebra-
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.