Travels in China Part 17

[Music: No. I.]

[Music: No. II.]

[Music: No. III.]

[Music: No. IV.]

[Music: No. V.]

[Music: No. VI.]

[Music: No. VII.]

[Music: No. VIII.]

[Music: No. IX.]

They have no other notion of noting down music than that of employing a character expressing the name of every note in the scale; and even this imperfect way they learned from Pereira the Jesuit. They affected to dislike the Emba.s.sador's band which they pretended to say produced no music, but a confusion of noises; yet the Emperor's chief musician gave himself a great deal of trouble in tracing out the several instruments on large sheets of paper, each of its particular size, marking the places of the holes, screws, strings, and other parts, which they conceived necessary to enable them to make others of a similar construction.

It would be difficult to a.s.sign the motive that induced Father Amiot to observe, that "the Chinese, in order to obtain their scale of notes or gamut perfect, were not afraid of submitting to the most laborious operations of geometry, and to the most tedious and disgusting calculations in the science of numbers;" as he must have known, that they were altogether ignorant of geometry, and that their arithmetic extended not beyond their _Swan-pan_. Of the same nature is the bold and unfounded a.s.sertion of another of the Jesuits, "that the musical system of the Chinese was borrowed from them by the Greeks and Egyptians, anterior to the time of Hermes or Orpheus!"

With regard to painting, they can be considered in no other light than as miserable daubers, being unable to pencil out a correct outline of many objects, to give body to the same by the application of proper lights and shadows, and to lay on the nice shades of colour, so as to resemble the tints of nature. But the gaudy colouring of certain flowers, birds, and insects, they imitate with a degree of exactness and brilliancy to which Europeans have not yet arrived. To give distance to objects on canvas, by diminishing them, by faint colouring, and by perspective, they have no sort of conception. At _Yuen-min-yuen_ I found two very large paintings of landscapes which, as to the pencilling, were done with tolerable execution, but they were finished with a minuteness of detail, and without any of those strong lights and ma.s.ses of shade, which give force and effect to a picture; none of the rules of perspective were observed, nor any attempt to throw the objects to their proper distances; yet I could not help fancying that I discovered in them the hand of an European. The old eunuch, who carried the keys of the room, frequently asked me, when looking at these pictures, if I did not think his countrymen were excellent painters; and having one day expressed great admiration for the talents of the artist, he led me into a recess of the room, and opening a chest, supported upon a pedestal, he observed, with a significant look, he was now going to produce something that would astonish me. He then took out several large volumes, which were full of figures, drawn in a very superior style and tinted with water colours, representing the several trades and occupations carried on in the country; but they seemed to be stuck against the paper, having neither shadow nor foreground, nor distance, to give them any relief. On the opposite page to each figure was a description, in the Mantchoo Tartar and the Chinese languages. Having turned over one of the volumes, I observed, on the last page, the name of _Castaglione_, which at once solved the riddle. On re-examining the large pictures in the hall, I found the same name in the corner of each. While going through the volume, the old eunuch frequently asked, if any one in Europe could paint like the Chinese? but, on my pointing to the name, and repeating the word _Castaglione_, he immediately shut the book and returned them all into the chest, nor, from that time, could I ever prevail upon him to let me have another sight of them. On enquiry, I found that Castaglione was a missionary in great repute at court, where he executed a number of paintings, but was expressly directed by the Emperor to paint all his subjects after the Chinese manner, and not like those of Europe, with broad ma.s.ses of shade and the distant objects scarcely visible, observing to him, as one of the missionaries told me, that the imperfections of the eye afforded no reason why the objects of nature should also be copied as imperfect. This idea of the Emperor accords with a remark made by one of his ministers, who came to see the portrait of His Britannic Majesty, "that it was great pity it should have been spoiled by the dirt upon the face," pointing, at the same time, to the broad shade of the nose.

Ghirrardini, an European painter, published an account of his voyage to China, where, it appears, he was so disgusted that, having observed how little idea they possess of the fine arts, he adds, with rather more petulancy than truth, "these Chinese are fit for nothing but weighing silver, and eating rice." Ghirrardini painted a large colonnade in vanishing perspective, which struck them so very forcibly that they concluded he must certainly have dealings with the Devil; but, on approaching the canvas and feeling with their hands, in order to be fully convinced that all they saw was on a flat surface, they persisted that nothing could be more unnatural than to represent distances, where there actually neither was, nor could be, any distance.

It is scarcely necessary to add any thing further with regard to the state of painting in China. I shall only observe, that the Emperor's favourite draughtsman, who may of course be supposed as good or better than others of the same profession in the capital, was sent to make drawings of some of the princ.i.p.al presents to carry to his master, then in Tartary, as elucidations of the descriptive catalogue. This man, after various unsuccessful attempts to design the elegant time-pieces of Vulliamy, supported by beautiful figures of white marble, supplicated my a.s.sistance in a matter which he represented as of the last importance to himself. It was in vain to a.s.sure him that I was no draughtsman; he was determined to have the proof of it; and he departed extremely well satisfied in obtaining a very mean performance with the pencil, to copy after or cover with his China ink. Every part of the machines, except the naked figures which supported the time-piece and a barometer, he drew with neatness and accuracy, but all his attempts to copy these were unsuccessful. Whether it was owing to any real difficulty that exists in the nice turns and proportions of the human figure, or that by being better acquainted with it we more readily perceive the defects in the imitation of it, or from the circ.u.mstance of the human form being concealed in this country in loose folding robes, that caused the Chinese draughtsman so completely to fail, I leave to the artists of our own country to determine: but the fact was as I state it; all his attempts to draw these figures were preposterous.

As to those specimens of beautiful flowers, birds, and insects, 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 quant.i.ties 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 ball.u.s.trades of bridges, and in their temples, where the niches are filled with gigantic G.o.ds 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 chast.i.ty._ _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 paG.o.das 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 a.s.sign 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 const.i.tute 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 const.i.tutes 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 const.i.tute 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 const.i.tuent parts of beauty. In the Chinese column, labouring under an enormous ma.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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 s.p.a.ce 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 gla.s.s; oiled paper, or silk gauze, or pearl sh.e.l.l, or horn, were used as subst.i.tutes 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 pa.s.sage 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 paG.o.das, 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 emba.s.sy 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 quant.i.ty 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 Emba.s.sy, 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 ma.s.sy 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 ma.s.s of matter in this stupendous fabric, it may be observed, that it is more than sufficient to surround the circ.u.mference 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 circ.u.mstances have contributed very materially to a.s.sist 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 ca.n.a.l. A number of difficulties must have arisen in accommodating the general level of the ca.n.a.l to the several levels of the feeding streams; for notwithstanding all the favourable circ.u.mstances 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 mult.i.tudes 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.ls 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 ca.n.a.l, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Construction of the Arch of a_ CHINESE BRIDGE

_Pub. May 10^th., 1804, by Cadell, & Davies Strand._