Here are a few excerpts from Mitford of life at Tachuehssu in those fat-elf days, nearly 80 years ago:—This is certainly the prettiest temple and the móst charming sum-met résidehce that I have seen nea? Peking. The temple stands in a nest of trees, cedars, pilies, firs and poplars; a perpetual fountain runs through all its courts, and there seems always to be a cool breeze blowing.... Just behind the Pavilion of the Reposing Clouds, in which we live, is a most beautiful rock work, all covered with tufts of feathery grass, mosses, ferns and lycopods.
"Down this and into an artificial basin, which is screened from the sun by a network of fir branches, comes tumbling a deliciously cool fountain scented with pine needles, which gives us a famous shower-bath twice a day—a real luxury. Close by my fountain is a little summer-house called The Pavilion of the Understanding of Important Matters. I wonder whether I have given you an idea of what a very pretty place this is? It is almost enough to tempt a man to turn Buddhist priest The surrounding country, too, he found most fascinating:—"The neighbourhood round about here is as charming as the place itself. The fields are richly cultivated; there i: plenty of hedgerow timber, and the villages are very picturesque and well shaded, The hills are beautifully shaped, and take fine colours of an evening. The one thing wanting is water, which is missing all over this part of China, Nothing can be prettier than the cottages of the villagers with their long, low eaves; each has its little garden hedged in by a fence of tall millet, over which are trained gourds and other creepers. There is generally, too, a millet-straw shed with a vine creeping About it, and under this the labourers sit of an evening and drink their tea, picture of contentment.
"The temples, both Taoist and Buddhist, are numerous. Yesterday I Scrambled up to a very pretty one on the top of a great eminence so Steep that it is called by the Chinese ihe Wall Mountain. I found à móst tharming monastery built in tiers, I Should have said terraces had it not Been so tiny, which reminded me of the tiers of the Rhenish vineyards. The monks had all gone off to Peking on a lark, but I was hospitably enter tained with tea by two lay attendants. for whose benefit I in return emptied my cigar case, "What a queer existence these people lead perched up on the top of a high hill! They are so stay-at-home that they hardly seem to even to gò down on to the plai And as to going to Peking, none but the better-to-do monks dream of Such dissipation.... Monks and laymen alike—all our neighbours vie with one another in civility to us. They all stop one to have a chat, and as for tea, I might drown myself in a butt of it, if I had a mind. jo women, however—and li: one village there are some ver; pretty ones—are as ferouches as wild deer. As I ride in at one end of the village I see them scuttling off into their houses, with (heir babes on their backs, as fast as their poor deformed feet will let them."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.