are gradually taking the place of metallic mirrors, but as the art of casting plate-glass is still unknown, they are poor reflectors and give a distorted image. The liau-lí is a vitreous composition between glass and porcelain, of a clouded green color in imitation of jade or serpentine, made into anklets, armlets, &c.

The cutting and setting of hard and precious stones is carried on to some extent. Spectacles are cut and ground in lathes from crystal, smoky quartz, and a variety of rose quartz resembling the cairngorm stone, which the Chinese call cha-tsing, or tea-stone, from its color. Their spectacles are not always true, and the wearer is obliged to have them ground away until his eyes are suited. The pebble is cut in a lathe by a wire-saw working in its own dust, into a round shape with plane edges. When worn, the rim rests upon the cheek bones; the frame has a hinge between the glasses, and the machine is kept on the ears by loops or weights. At Canton, foreign shaped spectacles are supplanting these primitive optics, but the prejudice is still in favor of crystal over glass. The cutting of diamonds is sometimes attempted, but most artists content themselves with polishing and clumsily setting them. The corundum is employed to bore holes for mending broken glass and porcelain, into which copper clamps are pounded; tumblers, jars, &c., are joined so securely in this way without cement as to hold fluids. Both these gems are used to cut glass, but the common way is to grease the place to be fractured, and slowly follow the line along by a lighted joss-stick until it breaks.

Sir John Davis has condensed all the important information concerning the materials and manufacture of porcelain,—a name given by the Portuguese to the semi-transparent cups they saw on their arrival, from their resemblance to the lustrous nacre of sea-shells, or porcellana, for they supposed it to be a composition of egg-shells, fish-glue, and scales-a good instance of the offhand, descriptions travellers formerly indulged in, just as Chinese writers now describe things new to them; as, for instance, when they call caoutchouc elephant's skin. The kaolin, or kau-ling, i. e. High ridge, the name of a hill near Jauchau fu, is obtained from the disintegrated granite in that region, and is nearly pure felspar, or such as contains no metallic substance; by slow decomposition the alkali and part of the silex is removed, and water imbibed. An analysis of the clay used in Europe, which pro

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bably does not differ materially from that employed in China, shows the constituents to be silica 43, alumine 36, water 19, and a trace of magnesia and carbonate of lime. The petuntse, or peh-tun-tsz', is nearly pure quartz, and the best is brought from Hwuichau in Nganhwui, but is procurable elsewhere; it is reduced to an impalpable powder by toilsome processes, and formed into cakes to sell to the manufacturers. Steatite or soapstone, called hwah shih, is also employed, and some forms of carbonate and sulphate of lime, which are mixed in to produce an inferior article, though still among the best now manufactured; the soapstone ware is more brittle than the other, but fine, white, and very light. The proportions of the ingredients vary according to the desired fineness of the ware. After the paste or biscuit is thoroughly mixed and formed into the required shape, the dishes are painted by workmen, each of whom takes a single color and a single part of the picture. The whole surface of the dish is sometimes covered with gay figures, but the most common decorations consist of heroes, statesmen, &c., in different attitudes and costumes, and sentences beautifully written referring to them and their times. Most of the inscriptions and figures seen upon mantel-piece ornaments, tea-cups, and jars, are of this nature, explaining some event in the life, or a panegyric upon the personages there represented; this affords an opportunity for persons to show their scholarship in explaining the quotation.

The colors used on the fine porcelain have long been admired, and De Guignes, who made many endeavors to procure samples of them and ascertain the mode of mixing them, has given the composition of some of the principal colors, but at present there is probably little to learn from them in this branch. After the workmen have finished the painting, the pieces are covered with a liquid mixture of alkali obtained from burning ferns with the quartzose petuntse, after which they are baked. The best articles are surrounded with a case lined with sand in order to protect them from the flame, and as the furnaces are only about six or eight feet square, the closest attention can be paid to the condition of the ware, and the exact time ascertained for reducing the heat and opening the kiln. Some of the pieces brought from the interior are perfectly white, and the patterns are afterwards painted and fixed on them according to the fancy of the customer. The finest specimens from the kilns of Kingteh chin in

Kiangsí, where the best ware has always been produced, are seldom brought to Canton, most of the ware exported being made in Fuhkien or Kwangtung.

Besides table furniture, the Chinese manufacture jars of various sizes, of beautiful colors and proportions, some of them four feet high, entirely covered with figures. Porcelain statuettes and idols are common, and some of the pieces bear extravagant prices from their fineness, coloring, antiquity, shape, or some other quality, which connoisseurs can only appreciate. The god of porcelain himself is usually made of this material. D'Entrecolles, in his account of the manufacture of the ware, says he owes his divinity to his self-immolation in one of the furnaces in utter despair at being able to accomplish the emperor's orders for the production of some vases of peculiar fineness; the pieces which came out of the furnace after the wretch was burned, pleased his majesty so much that he deified him. Cheap stoneware is made at Shauking fu, and many other places. It usually presents but one pattern and one color, and both pattern and color have been imitated in the west so extensively and closely, that blue is now almost regarded as the only legitimate color for dishes, and the picture of an arbor, bridge, two boats and two swallows, with three people, the most appropriate design for that color.

The exportation of porcelain is a very ancient branch of commerce, and, as the material is imperishable, it is not strange that specimens should occasionally be met with, even at a great distance from China. The discovery of Chinese snuff bottles in Egyptian tombs, containing quotations from a Chinese poet of the 12th century, shows that intercourse existed between the extremes of Asia in the tenth or eleventh centuries, before China was made known to Europeans. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt of the existence of a constant interchange of commodities long prior to this period, though all explicit record of the course and objects of the traffic has been lost. Davis notices two bottles which had been purchased in Egypt by travellers, and in his Sketches of China, refers to the subject again,* adding an extract from a letter written by Rosellini, in which that Egyptologist states that he found one of these little bottles in a "petit panier

*The Chinese, Vol. II., p. 242; Sketches of China, Vol. II., page 72; Medhurst's China, its State and Prospects, page 135.

PORCELAIN SNUFF BOTTLES IN EGYPTIAN TOMBS. ⚫ 119

tissu de feuilles de palmier," with other objects of Egyptian manufacture, in a tomb, whose date he places between B. c. 1800 and 1100. His words are, Ayant penétré dans un de ces trois tombeaux j'y ai trouvé," &c., which is as explicit as possible. He also adds, that many fragments of similar bottles had been offered to him by the peasants, which he had looked upon as quite modern till this discovery showed that they were real antiques.

When the writer was in Cairo in 1845, he saw six or eight of these bottles in Dr. Abbott's collection, bearing different drawings and inscriptions, but none of them had been taken from tombs by persons capable of examining their position, nor had the Doctor ever heard of an instance of one being found in situ besides this of Rosellini's, though there is no reason for doubting that they came from the tombs. The descriptions on the bottles given by Davis are all lines of poetry, and one of them, Hăng hwa hung shih li, "The almond blushes for ten miles round,”he traces to a Chinese song prior to the Christian era. Another line, Ming yuch sung chung chau, "The bright moon shines amidst the firs," is part of a well-known couplet of Su Tungpo, which he altered from a distich already fifty years old. The authors of two other lines, "The flower opens, and lo! another year;" and "Only in the midst of this mountain;" are not known, so that no certain deductions can be drawn from them, in illustration of this interesting discovery. Another argument against their high antiquity, is, that the running-hand in which the characters are written was not invented much before A. D. 1000; and, according to the Chinese themselves, fine porcelain was not made before the 7th century, but the coarse quality of those found in Egypt favors the idea of their early date.

These facts lead to the inference that the tomb entered by Rosellini had been opened before his discovery, and the palmleaf basket deposited there, perhaps during the Roman emperors, or in the times of the caliphs. The perfect similarity be tween the bottles found in Egypt and those now made by the Chinese, shows how unchangeable is their taste, though there is no prospect of solving the question of their date or introduction into Egypt until some hierologist himself finds one or two in a tomb whose date and other particulars can be settled. The more antiquarian researches extend in Asia, however, the more shall

we find that the books and inscriptions now extant do not contain the earliest dates of inventions and travels.

The cheap pottery of the Chinese resembles the common Egyptian ware in color and brittleness, but it is less porous when unglazed. Tea-kettles, pans, cups, tea-pots, and the usual articles of household need; immense jars, comparable to hogsheads, for holding water; fancy images, flower-pots, and a thousand other articles, are everywhere burned from clay, and sold at a very cheap rate. The use of the jars is universal in shops for containing liquids, powders, &c.; in gardens for keeping fish, collecting rain, and receiving manure and offal; and in boats and houses for the same uses barrels, pails, and pans, are put to elsewhere. Water will boil sooner, and a dish of vegetables be cooked more expeditiously, in one of these earthen pots than in metal; the caloric seems to permeate the clay almost as soon as it is over the fire. Fine tiles, glazed blue and green for roofs of temples, and yellow for palaces, are made of stoneware, but the common roofing and flooring tiles are burned from brick clay. Drum-shaped stools and garden seats, vitruvian ornaments for balustrades, fanciful flower-pots in the shape of buffaloes, representing the animal feeding under the shade of a tree growing out of its body, fishes, dragons, phoenixes, and other objects for decorating the ridges and eaves of roofs, are manufactured of this Flat figures of the human form are set into frames to represent groups of persons, and elegantly shaped characters are arranged into sentences, to be suspended from the walls of apartments, making altogether a great variety of purposes to which this material is applied.

ware.

The beautiful lacquered-ware owes its lustrous coloring to a composition of lampblack and the clarified juice obtained from a species of sumach, called Rhus vernix or Vernicia. Wood oils are obtained from other plants of the same family, and the different qualities of lacquered-ware are owing to the use of these inferior ingredients. The real varnish tree is described by De Guignes as resembling the ash in its foliage and bark; it is about fifteen feet in height, and furnishes the sap when seven years old, which is carefully collected from incisions in the trunk opened in the summer nights. The body of the ware is wood partially smoothed, or pasteboard, upon which two or three coats of a composition of lime, paper, and gum are first laid and thoroughly