CHINESE ART. For the purpose of this inquiry the history of China may be said to begin with the Dynasty of the Ilan and the accession of Kao-Tsou about R.C. 200. Sonic very interesting sculptures on sandstone. parts of family tombs, brought together long afterwards by native anti quarians and preserved in the Province of Shan tung, are the earliest works of the kind which it is possible to date even approximately. But it is observable that in this, the earliest piece of ancient art so far examined, we have which remains in a seaboard province and within a few hours' ride of a great thoroughfare. The same peculiarity obtains in whatever is known of Chinese architecture, architectural sculpture, and fixed and permanent art of any sort; it is close to sonic great centre never wholly closed to Europeans. What the vast territories of the empire contain, and what its swarming millions have produced during the two thousand years of record and the thirty centuries of legen dary history, is not as yet ascertained. No residents of China and no travelers from Euro pean lands have given to the world a full ac count of the remains in even one province; and even the external appearance of buildings in the remoter provinces is known only from very recent photographs taken by casual passers-by.
In fact. aremeologieal science has not been in-, troduced into the study of Chinese buildings and ruins, and the slightest observation has been accepted as complete and as containing truth ap plicable to the whole empire.
The famous great Wall of China is generally bought to date from the close of the Third Cen tury B.C., but this, in spite of its vast extent and the evidence it gives of much practical capacity among large classes of the population, is not in any sense a work of fine art, nor is it equal, in any part of its length of some 1500 miles, to the walls and gates of the greater cities. it does, however, enable us to accept more readily the extraordinary tales of important works done by the first Han Emperor, Kao-Tsou. already named, especially in the way of bridges built over the numerous water courses of the central and western provinces of the empire. These bridges were sometimes mas sive, rivaling modern engineering works in the prodigious amount of labor and expense involved, and sometimes of light material and hung in air over mountain torrents.