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cottages in ruins, standing among heaps of broken bricks and rubbish, tell of a once denser population.

On either side, in the distance-stretching away round fields, cottages, ruins and all-rise up the huge walls of the city, twenty-four miles in circuit; indubitable evidence of what the size of this former capital of the Chinese Empire once was.

Straight in front of us, to the south, more than three miles distant, is a rising piece of ground with a gateway on its summit: we trudge on, thinking that that must be the Southern Gate; but when we arrive there, we find that it is an isolated gateway, standing nearly in the middle of the vast expanse within the walls, and we have still nearly four miles between us and the point for which we are making.

We can distinguish the real South Gate in the distance, with the line of massive walls on either side of it, whilst between us and it lies the present city of Nankin, a tolerably dense and extensive mass of low houses, but covering scarcely a sixth part of the space within the walls. For another hour we ride on, at first through more waste spaces and cultivated fields, then through a long street, wider than the widest of the Canton streets, but with poorer shops on either side. At last we emerge from the South Gate, and another quarter of a mile brings us to the Arsenal.

Close to the Arsenal is the house of its Scotch manager, built partly out of the ruins of the celebrated Porcelain Pagoda, of which nothing but a heap of rubbish, within a hundred yards of the house, now remains. Strange that what was once a chief glory of China should help to provide material for the house of a Western Barbarian!

The destruction of this once beautiful building was but a degree worse than the way in which nearly every archi

tectural remnant of old China is allowed to go to ruin by the present Government. The Taipings took possession of Nankin in 1853, and fixed their head-quarters there. Tienwang, their commander-in-chief, was informed that one of his subordinates had boasted that from the top of the Pagoda he could command the city, and accordingly he slew the subordinate and blew up the tower.

Such is the tale of the fate of the tower which the Chinese held to be the most beautiful in the world, though it must be remembered that in a Chinaman's mind the world' is synomyous with the Chinese Empire. Though styled the Porcelain Pagoda, it had but one outer layer of porcelain bricks; some of these survived the ruin, and our friend of the Arsenal tells us that he tried without success to bore one of them with his best steel drillsuch is the hardness of their material.

Nearly in the centre of the present town of Nankin, not far from the Western Wall, on a slightly rising ground, is a new and good specimen of a Confucian Temple. As we have already seen several Buddhist temples, let us ride into the city and see this example of a sacred building of another of the three nominal religions of China (Buddhism, Confucianism, and Tauism.) We say 'nominal,' because the latter two systems are rather systems of philosophy than religion, consisting of the series of moral doctrines left by their respective founders, Koong-foo-tse-or, as we call him, Confucius-and Laou-ken. This temple at Nankin consists, like most of the Buddhist temples, of a series of quadrangles with corridors, lir.ed by the priests' apartments, running round three sides of them, while on the fourth side is one of the main halls of the temple, with its wooden or stone portico in front, and its upturned roof above. It contains, however, no idols; in the large hall are merely five or six tablets inscribed with the name of Confucius,

CHINESE BEGGARS.

Mencius, and other from their writings.

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philosophers, or with aphorisms Incense-sticks are burnt before

these tablets, but no prayers are made to them; in fact, the idea of the Confucian ceremonies seems rather that of keeping sacred the memory of the philosopher than of paying him divine honours.

From near the temple we have an extensive view over the city and the surrounding country. To the east we can distinguish, apparently not far outside the walls, a conical mound at the foot of the high range of hills which overlook the city on that side. That mound is the tomb of one of the Mings, the dynasty of emperors which preceded the present Manchow dynasty; a ride out to it will be not uninteresting.

As we thread our way through the streets from the temple we can hear every now and then the cry of Yangquei-tse!' (foreign devil) from some of the children and women of the city; further insult we do not meet with, although foreigners are rather rarely seen in Nankin.

The most unpleasant part of the passage is the meeting every now and then with a genuine Nankin beggar. More than once, a creature, whom one would scarcely take to be a human being, scantily clad in the ragged remnants of a cloak of straw, his face and legs covered with dust and dirt, or blotched with some hideous skin disease, his hair long and matted, and his eyes either glaring like those of a madman, or sunk and hollow with famine, comes suddenly in front of us, and poking out with his lean and bony arm a straw platter or an old bamboo hat, will not leave us till we either threaten him or give him some few copper coins. Travellers have stated that there are no beggars in China from our experience Nankin can show beggar more loathsome than any other place in the world.

Passing a great oblong mass of lofty stone walls, en

closing the ruins of the Imperial palace, we go out at the East Gate, turn northwards, and ride for half-a-mile close under the city wall. We have here a good opportunity of estimating the size of these famous walls. They are indeed gigantic enough to remind one of the accounts of the walls of Nineveh or Babylon. Their average height is fifty feet, but in many places they are at least seventy feet in height; their breadth at the base is rather more than thirty feet, and they are wide enough at the top to allow of two carriages passing each other. Their principal material is earth and concrete; they are faced with wellmade blueish-gray bricks, many of which have inscriptions on them: these bricks, being laid always with the long face outwards, are in many places falling away.

Leaving the wall, we strike across a mile of waste land which, before the Taiping war spread devastation here as in hundreds of other square miles of fruitful land, was cut up into fertile fields. We soon approach the huge conical mound of earth thrown up to cover the five or six feet of clay representing his majesty Choo, the founder of the Ming dynasty. It is probably about two-thirds the size of the Great Pyramid, to which also, in the end for which it was constructed, and in its bulk, it may bear comparison.

Round the foot of the mound runs a brick wall, which is pierced, in front of the mound, by a massive gateway. In front of the gateway are the remains of a handsome stone bridge, leading over a small ravine, and approached by a broad stone causeway. A hundred yards along the causeway is a handsome basement of stone, surmounted by fragments of columns and well-carved tablets. The stone is of a fine gray colour, and apparently hard and close-grained.

Leading away from these remains is the most remark

THE TOMBS OF THE MINGS.

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able feature of all-a semi-circular avenue of stone animals and men. The men are warriors and statesmen, twice the size of life; the animals-dogs, horses, lions, tigers, camels, and elephants-are half as large again as their living models. They are all arranged in pairs, facing each other: sixty yards separate each pair. Each is of a single piece of stone, and the whole array are supposed to represent the retinue required by the deceased monarch in the world of darkness. Some of them are in rather a ruinous condition: the men look tired of standing, and are gradually leaning over to their fall: the lions look very tame, and one of them has lost a leg; the elephant has evidently vegetated too long, for a young tree is growing out of a crack in his back. Standing up, as they do, alone in the deserted plain, they have a strange weird look: in their massiveness, want of grace, and rude picturesqueness, they remind us of the style of Egyptian or Assyrian remains: they certainly seem like the remains belonging to an old-world monarchy, and yet they are said to be scarcely 500 years old.

We return to our host at the Arsenal, and only regret that we cannot take advantage of his hospitality for a longer time. Having passed through various phases of life, from that of a merchant's clerk in England to that of a general in the Imperial Chinese army, he has a rare fund of anecdotes and information, and a specially intimate acquaintance with the habits and character of the Chinese of all grades. But we must leave him at his task of teaching the Chinese how to make rifled cannon and patent rockets, and continue our voyage up the river.

For a distance of sixty miles above Nankin we see nothing on either side of the river but a flat, semi-cultivated bank, backed here and there by a distant range of hills. The width of the stream varies from half a mile to

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