and animals at intervals all the way to Kal-gan. The Ming tombs are approached by lines of colossal monoliths in marble, for half a mile. Similar avenues are not infrequent, as approaches to tombs.[1] Jesuit letters of the sixteenth century speak of statues in the temples, of very great size, and covered with beaten gold.[2]
Even more astonishing is the quantity and quality of minute sculpture. The great pagoda of Nan-king was beset with innumerable images. The Chinese are elaborate workmen in ivory, horn, mother-of-pearl, jade, and bronze. The cutting of many a jade vase must have cost the labor of a lifetime, and this toilsomeness, hinted in their making jade the emblem of all virtues, enforced at last the substitution of their equally beautiful porcelain.[3]
Without perspective, shadows, or emphasis in tone, all of which are rejected as optical illusions, their paintings excite our wonder by skilful management and intense purity of color; whether heightened by the soft hazy texture of their pith paper, or imitating the primal greens, golds, and blues of earth and sky on their pagoda roofs. There are descriptive accounts of celebrated painters, one of which enumerates fifteen hundred names; and full treatises on painting as an art.[4] Their devotion to ornamental work is mechanized by the use of classic books of conventional forms, and each workman gives his whole attention to one kind of pattern.[5] So much is art a matter of mechanical dexterity, that the painters have learned a wonderful sleight in managing two brushes at once. Artists lecture to crowds by the blackboard, and execute pictures of birds and beasts with their finger tips, with great address.[6] Paintings from Buddha's life in the recognized attitudes cover the temples.
