MODES OF LIGHTING AND WARMING HOUSES.

7

squares supply the place of window-glass. Latterly, this material has become cheap at Canton, though one reason for its limited use is the fear of thieves. Oiled paper is employed at the north instead of shells. The kitchen is a small affair, for the universal use of portable furnaces enables the inmates to cook wherever the smoke will be least troublesome. Even if there is a chimney, which is not common, it does not project beyond the roof. Warming the house, even as far north as Ningpo, is not frequent, but further up, as at Peking, the inmates are protected from the cold by closing the crevices, and constructing flues under the rooms, which are heated by one fire. The poor build a sort of brick fireplace, which by day is used for cooking, and at night for a bed, by placing felt carpets over the warm bricks, where all the family sleep. Every effort is made to husband fuel, which is not only high priced, but scarce.

The country establishments of grandees are arranged on a little different plan from the dwellings in towns, and their grounds are walled in. In these inclosures, the hall of ancestors, library, school-room, and summer-houses, are often detached from the main edifice, and erected upon low plinths, surrounded by a veranda, and frequently decorated with paint and ornamental carving. Near the rear court are the female apartments and offices, many of the former and the sleeping apartments being in attics. Considerable space is occupied by the quadrangles, which are paved and embellished by fish-pools, flowering shrubs, and other plants. Mr. Fortune (Wanderings, page 98) describes the house and garden of a gentleman at Ningpo, as being connected by rude looking caverns of rockwork, "and what at first sight appears to be a subterranean passage leading from room to room, through which the visitor passes to the garden. The small courts, of which a glimpse is caught in passing along, are fitted up with rockwork; dwarf trees are planted here and there in various places, and graceful creepers hang down into the pools in front. These being passed, another cavernous passage leads into the garden, with its dwarf trees, vases, ornamented lattices, and beautiful shrubs suddenly opening to the view. By windings and glimpses along the rocky passages into other courts, and hiding the real boundary by masses of shrubs and trees, the grounds are made to appear much larger than they really are."

The houses of the poor are dark, dirty, low, and narrow tenements, without floor or windows, and the few apartments wretched in the extreme. The door is a mat swinging from the lintel, and the whole family often sleep, eat, and live in a single room. Pigs, dogs, and hens dispute the space with children and furniture, if a table, and a few trestles and stools, pots and plates, deserve that name, and all the duties of cooking and working are conducted in or near this room. The filthy street without is a counterpart to the gloomy, smoky abode within, and a single walk through the streets and lanes of such a neighborhood is sufficient to reconcile a person to any ordinary condition of life. On the outskirts of the town a still poorer class are forced to take up with huts made of mats and thatch upon the ground, through which the rain and wind find free course. It is surprising that people can live and enjoy health, and even be cheerful, as the Chinese are, in such circumstances. Between these miserable dwellings, and the spacious abodes of the rich, is a class of middle houses, consisting of three or four small rooms under a single roof, and lodging eight, ten, or more inmates.

The best furniture is made of a dark durable wood resembling ebony; but the rooms are filled with ornamental articles, such as large porcelain jars and vases, copper tripods or pots, stone screens, book-shelves and stands, &c., rather than with chairs, couches, or tables. The ink sketches of landscapes, and the pairs of gay scrolls inscribed with sentences suspended from the walls, and the pretty lanterns hanging from the ceiling, relieve the cheerlessness of the room; and the combined effect is not destitute of variety and even elegance, though there is a want of what we term comfort. Partitions are sometimes fancifully made of lattice work with a great number of openings, neatly arranged for the reception of boxes containing books. The bedrooms are small, poorly ventilated, and seldom visited except at night. A rich bedstead is a massive article, made of costly woods, elaborately carved, and supporting a tester, from which hang silken curtains. The front of the tester is ornamented with a fancy scroll, and the mosquito curtains, with which every bed is provided, triced up with copper or silver hooks. Cheaper bedsteads simply consist of two boards resting on trestles, and the bedclothes of a quilted coverlet. Mattresses or

STYLE OF GARDENS.

feather beds are not used, and the pillow is a hard square frame of rattan or bamboo. The bed and its appurtenances of a wardrobe and toilet, usually complete the furniture of the sleeping apartments of the Chinese, who, generally speaking, care very little for this part of their houses. Servants and workmen are accommodated in separate apartments, or find a lodgment by spreading their mat and coverlet upon the floor or piazza. The women belonging to the house have no other room than their chamber, and ordinarily each wife and concubine has her own.

The grounds of the rich are laid out in good style, and no expense is spared upon them; and were not the tasteful arrangements and diversified shrubbery which would render them charming resorts, almost always spoiled by their general bad keeping, neglect and ruin, if not nastiness and offals, being often visible in Chinese gardens, especially if the mansion be an old one, they would please the most fastidious. The necessity of having a place for the women and children of the household to recreate themselves, is one reason for having an open space within the inclosure, even if it be only a plat of flowers or a bed of vegetables. In the imperial gardens, the attempt to make an epitome of nature has been highly successful; and such is the case too in others which foreigners have visited, where the owner was able to gratify his taste. De Guignes describes their art of gardening as "imitating the beauties and producing the inequalities of nature. Instead of alleys planted symmetrically or uniform grounds, there are winding footpaths, trees here and there as if by chance, woody or sterile hillocks, and deep gulleys with narrow passages, whose sides are steep or rough with rocks, and presenting only a few miserable shrubs. They like to bring together in gardening in the same view, cultivated grounds and arid plains; to make the field uneven, and cover it with artificial rockwork; to dig caverns in mountains, on whose tops are arbors half overthrown, and around which tortuous footpaths run and return into themselves, prolonging, as it were, the extent of the grounds and increasing the pleasure of the walk."

A pool or fish pond, supplied by a rivulet running wildly through the grounds or over the hillocks when possible, forms an indispensable feature of such gardens, in which if there be room, a summer-house is erected on a rocky islet, or on piles over the

water, accessible by a rugged causey of rockwork. The lotus is grown in the pools, its large plate-like leaves and magnificent flowers rendering it a general favorite, and carp and other fish are reared in their waters; gold fish are kept in small vessels or tanks. Whenever it is possible, a gallery runs along the sides of the pond for the pleasure and use of the females in the household. Jets-d'eau are uncommon, nor are dwelling-houses furnished with water by pipes, wells and cisterns being the usual sources of supply. A pretty device in some gardens, which beguiles the visitor's ramble, is to make a rude kind of shell or pebble mosaic in the gravelly paths, representing birds, animals, or other figures; the time required to decipher them prolongs the walk, and apparently increases the size of the grounds. The pieces of rockwork are cemented together, and bound with strong wire; and in fish-pools, grottoes, or causeways, this unique ornament almost always has a pretty effect, partly because the moss and plants which grow upon it from neglect add rather to its appropriateness.

The wood and mason work of the Chinese is showy and unsubstantial, requiring constant repairs, and therefore both their gardens and houses, when neglected, soon fall into a ruinous condition; but when new they present a pretty appearance. The Fa ti or Flower gardens near Canton, well known to foreigners there, are merely shops for the sale of plants kept in pots, and make no pretensions to ornamental gardening. Some of the principal merchants there have cultivated grounds of greater or less extent attached to their establishments, but none of them have gardens exhibiting much of the peculiar style of the country. One of the late hong-merchants built a glass summer-house on his premises covered by a light roof, and so that it could be closed with shutters. All who entered it could hardly avoid quoting the old adage, "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.'

The arrangement of shops and warehouses necessarily differs from that of dwelling-houses, but either from not feeling its necessity, or from the value of the ground, few of them have any rear yard. The rear room of the shop is a small, dark apartment, used for a dormitory, store-room, or workshop, and sometimes for all, according as the case may be. Small ones are usually lighted from the front, but the largest by a skylight, in

CONSTRUCTION OF SHOPS.

11

which cases there is a latticed partition screen reaching nearly across the room just behind the door, to seclude the inside of the shop from the street. There are in most cases no windows in front, but the whole is thrown open by day and closed at night by shutters running in grooves, and secured by heavy crossbars to a row of posts, which fit in sockets in the threshold and lintel. The doorway recedes a foot or two, and the projecting roof serves to protect customers from the rain and sun, and such goods as are exposed for sale. In small shops there are two counters, a long one running in from the door, and another upon the wall of the shop, at right angles to it, reaching from the door across the front. The shopman sits within the angle of the two, and as they are low he can easily serve a customer in the street as well as in the shop. At night, the smaller one often forms a lodging place for homeless beggars. The front of the outer counter is of granite, and a niche containing a tablet inscribed to Plutus or Mammon, is cut in the end, where incense is burned every day to invoke a profitable business. Another shrine is placed within the apartment, dedicated to the deity of the place, whoever he may be. It is the duty of the clerks to light incense sticks and burn paper before these shrines twice, if not oftener, every day. The loft over shops is much smaller than the main apartment, for as its floor must not intercept the skylight, it is merely a small chamber towards the street reached by a gallery along the sides of the wall, and lighted by the windows in front. Chinese tradesmen do not make the display of shopkeepers in western cities in exhibiting their goods, and the partial use made of glass renders it not always safe to do so. The want of a yard compels shopmen to do their cooking and washing either behind or on top of the building, for in most cases the clerks and workmen both eat and sleep under the same roof. In the densest parts of the city of Canton, the roofs are covered with a loose framework, on which firewood is piled, clothes washed and dried, and meals cooked; it also affords a lounging and sleeping place in summer. In case of fire, however, these lumbered roofs become like so many tinder-boxes, and aid not a little to spread the flames.

The narrowness of the streets in Chinese cities is a source of more inconveniences than benefits; few of them exceed ten or twelve feet in width, and most of those in Canton are less than eight. No public squares filled with fountains and shrubbery,