length, after many struggles with their prejudices, consented to conform to ancient usage. The first audience was granted him at one of the emperor's country palaces, where, when he arrived, though the morning was cold and frosty, he found all the ministers of state and officers belonging to the court seated cross-legged upon their fur cushions in the open air,—an exhibition probably intended to serve as a reproof to the insolent barbarian who could object to bow nine times before a prince at whose door the greatest men in the Celestial Empire were contented to sit cross-legged in the frost! Nothing of that magnificence which Marco Polo found at the court of Kublai Khan was discoverable in that of Kamhi, where, on the contrary, the only circumstances truly remarkable were the extreme plainness of every thing and the affability and calm good sense of the aged monarch, who, in insisting on the observance of ancient forms and ceremonies, was actuated, it was clear, by no motives of paltry vanity.
Though Gibbon, with all his disposition to skepticism, allowed to Pekin a population of two millions, it would appear from Bell's account, who says he rode round it at an easy trot in four hours, to be inferior to London in size; and no one who is acquainted with the form of Chinese houses, which are never more than one story high, and who reflects upon the extent of the imperial gardens, together with all the other gardens included within the walls, will doubt for a moment that it is vastly less populous. Upon the accounts of the Chinese themselves no reliance whatever can be placed. They are greater proficients in lying than the ancient Cretans; and on the subject of population have deluded European travellers with fables so monstrous, that there is nothing in Gulliver more repugnant to common sense. To maintain the one-half of the population to which their empire makes pretensions would demand a progress in civilization and the arts of life
