A Study in Bronze and Marble
ECORATING the broad and spacious verandahs of imperial palaces, alike in the Forbidden City and in the less formal halls of the Summer Palace, are huge cylindrical bronze urns. These were A l not used to inter the ashes of the emperors, as some irreverent Westerer might suppose, but were made to burn sweet incense, or took time perhaps even more costly gifts as votive offerings to the gods. These tall urns are often interspersed with ornamental figures of the dragon or the phoenix, skillfully cast in bronze. Such an artistic little comer is found on the lofty terrace leading into the dragon guarded precincts of one of the principal halls of the Wan Shou Shan. The terrace is ascended on the front and two sides by broad flights of stairs, and is surrounded by cloud-bedecked balustrades of purest white marble. The author was inadvertently included in this otherwise excellent photograph, as he stood examining at close range the handsome bronze dragon whose counterpart, occupying a similar position on the right side of the terrace, is also shown on page seventy-seven. Note the rich, highly-wrought carving on the splendid marble pedestals, and the grace and symmetry in every line of this lifelike old dragon. Unfortunately, these fine old specimens have suffered under the relentless hand of time, for the flame-covered disc, doubtless representing the sun, that was formerly held within the dragon's uplifted paw has disappeared. Thus the glory of Peking's beautiful palaces and courts is gradually passing away. Mammoth walls and towers are being tor from their foundations; famous monuments are falling into decay; precious works of art are slowly disintegrating; celestial globes are losing their bronze, sun-kissed ornaments; priceless treasures are mysteriously disappearing from their age-old pedestals; and just as the miniature "sun" has vanished from the paw of the dragon, so the glory of past splendor is slowly but surely slipping away from Peking under the hands of the less reverent sons and daughters of this ultra-republican age. At the present rate of decay, what will Peking the Beautiful be like one hundred, or even fifty years hence? One is templed to moralize.
