not gain above one mace (about ninepence) per day.

Barbers put their wash-stand on one end of a bamboo-pole, and their case of drawers, fitted up as a seat for their customers, and containing all the tonsorial apparatus, on the other end. They perform their functions in the open street, or in the market place, without feeling the least sense of impropriety.

"Shoemakers and tailors are much better off than workers in metal. They receive higher wages, and are more esteemed. Joiners and carpenters have the name of skilful artizans. The former are able to imitate exactly our European furni

ture, and the latter are famous for boat-building, though very deficient in the construction of houses. -Some few individuals at Canton, and in other large cities, can make clocks and watches: but they are unable to manufacture the steel work. We have also seen a rudely-made musket, of which, however, the lock was foreign. All articles, the making of which requires more than mere mechanical skill, and the application of profound thought and mathematical exactness, is beyond Chinese ingenuity. Whenever they have a good pattern, the natives of Canton will endeavour to imitate it, but they attempt nothing further. Addicted from their youth to follow ancient rule, they do not, even in their daily occupations, think for themselves, but prefer accommodating themselves to others."

The Chinese are strangers to machinery, but their ingenuity is conspicuous in the ready and simple modes in which they contrive to abridge labour. An example of this is furnished by Dr. Abel; he says:— "Chance led me to the shop of a blacksmith, the manufacturer of various iron instruments, from a sword to a hoe. This man

well understood the modifying properties of heat, and took the fullest advantage of them in all the practical concerns of his business. He was forming a reaping hook at the time of my visit. A large pair of shears, having one blade fixed in a heavy block of wood, and the other furnished with a long handle, to serve as a lever, stood beside him. Bringing a piece of metal of the necessary dimensions from the forge at a white heat, he placed it between the blades of this instrument, and cut it into shape with equal ease and despatch."

The fashion of most of the Chinese tools is very peculiar. The saw of the carpenter, for instance, is formed of a thin plate of steel, which is kept straight by a light frame of bamboo at the back, which serves at the same time for a handle. Then again, carpenters work their awls with a thong, the two extremities of which are attached to the two ends of a stick. The thong being quite slack, is turned round the handle of the awl once, and the instrument is then worked backwards and forwards with great velocity.

Concerning some of the industrious arts of the Chinese, it is questioned whether they are original, or borrowed from India. Thus, in cleaning cotton, they make use of a double process, in most respects similar to that known in India. In order to free the cotton from its seed, two wooden cylinders are placed horizontally one above the other, and very nearly in contact. by a wheel and treadle, plied to one side of the the cylinders to the other, while the seeds which are too large to enter between them fall to the ground. This done, the cotton is freed from knots and dirt by a second process. An elastic bow, with a tight string, is held by the carder over a heap of the wool. The string of this bow is pulled down with some force under a portion of the cotton, by means of a wooden instrument in his right hand, while at the same time he suddenly allows the bow to recoil. The vibration thus continually kept up, scatters and loosens the cotton, and separates it into fine white flocks, without injuring the fibre.

These are put in motion and the cotton being apcrevice is turned over by

In most cases, however, no doubt can exist as to the originality of inventions among the Chi

nese.

Their mode of making candles from the seed of the croton sebiferum, and of extracting oil from the berry of the camellia oleifera, is peculiar. So also is their manufacture of metals, of which the mirror may form an example. The speculum of their mirrors is apparently formed of a mixture of copper and tin, with, perhaps, a portion of silver, as were some of the metallic mirrors used among the ancients. But the originality of the mirror among the Chinese is more conspicuous in the form than the composition. It has a knob in the centre of the back, by which it can be held, and on the rest of the back are stamped certain circles in relief, with a kind of Grecian border. Its polished surface has that degree of convexity which gives an image of the face half its natural size; and its remarkable property is, that when the rays of the sun are reflected from the polished surface, the image of the ornamental border, and circles stamped upon the back, are seen reflected on the wall. By this art, as Brewster observes, the artist has contrived to make the observer deceive himself. The stamped figures on the back are used for this purpose. The spectrum in the luminous area is not an image of the figures on the back. The figures are a copy of the picture which the artist has drawn on the face of the mirror, and so concealed by polishing, that it can only be brought to light by the rays of the

sun.

The native ingenuity of the Chinese has been thus noticed by Sir George Staunton :-" Two of them took down the two magnificent glass lustres sent as presents to the emperor, in order to place them in a more advantageous position. They

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separated them piece by piece, and put them together again without difficulty or mistake, the whole consisting of many thousand pieces, though they had never seen anything of the kind before. Another Chinese cut a narrow slip from the edge of a curved plate of glass, in order to supply the place of one belonging to the dome of the Planetarium, which had been broken. The English mechanics belonging to the embassy had in vain attempted to cut the glass according to this curved line, with the assistance of a diamond. The native workman did not show his method; but it was said he succeeded by first drawing the point of a heated iron across the surface to be divided."

ARTS.

In sculpture, as regards the art of cutting stone into imitative forms of living objects, the Chinese are very defective. Their sculptured figures in stone are altogether rude, both in form and proportion. And it may be owing to this lack of skill in the art of sculpture, that their gods are never represented in stone, but always in modelled clay. No very great anatomical skill is required, as the figures, unlike those in the Grecian Pantheon in general, are always clothed. The drapery in which they are enveloped, and which is executed with much truth and effect, conceals their deficiency of skill in modelling. If exhibited in a state of nudity, their idols would appear a caricature of human beings, rather than imitations. The same deficiency of skill is, also, displayed in their sculptured representations of flowers.

In drawing and painting, where a scientific