They are described as having been 'untrained, illdisciplined, and cowardly.' (2) The Chinese provincial army of the Green Standard,' comprising the land and marine forces. The former numbered 400,000 or 500,000 and is an effete organisation discharging the duties of sedentary garrisons, and local constabulary.'

Orders were issued in 1898 by the Central Government at Peking to disband this force and use the funds thus saved for soldiers trained in European methods; but these commands were disobeyed by the Viceroys.

(3) The braves or irregulars, enlisted or disbanded as required, and used for actual warfare. No approximate guess can be made of their numbers.

Of late years a fourth division should be added, in which should be classed those trained on European lines, some 10,000 in number. After the Japanese War, thirty-five German instructors, under Captain Reitzenstein, were engaged to drill these troops.

As a consequence of the war with Japan in 1894 and the Boxer rebellion in 1900, the above system was proved to be inefficient. Nominally, the troops in the Eighteen Provinces numbered about 650,000, but, owing to peculation, the actual number was probably less than half that for which pay was drawn by the provincial authorities.

Reform having been shown, by bitter experience, to be indispensable, in the year 1901 the military forces were reorganized in three divisions: campaign, reserve, and police corps. Each division was to comprise twelve infantry battalions, one cavalry regiment, three battalions of artillery, and one company of engineers. The new lu chün land forces were also organized, and in 1903 and 1906 six Divisions enrolled. To carry out further reforms and developments, the Ministry of War (Lu Chün Pu) was established, with the object of creating thirty-six Divisions within ten years,—a programme hindered by subsequent political upheavals. At the end of the Monarchical period there were said to be 800,000 men under arms. In August, 1913, the strength of the regular army was 500,000.

Latterly, the Chinese army has not consisted so much of one body as of several armies under the command of the various rival military governors, who practically rule the country in defiance of the civil authorities.

The tendency has been to imitate in large part the Japanese military system, which in turn was copied from the German.

There are several arsenals in different parts of the country, capable of manufacturing large- and small-arm ammunition, smokeless powder, etc.

On the coast, at the different treaty ports, as well as at some other places, for example, at the Bogue, fortifications after the Western style have been constructed, and breechloading guns, of modern make, have been provided.

References.-Mayers, Chinese Government; Chinese Repository, vol. xx; Mémoires sur les Chinois, Tom. vii; Dyer Ball, Things Chinese, (4th edit.) and Mesny, Chinese Miscellany, Vol. i (for accounts of the pre-Republican Chinese army); China Year Book (for statistics of modern army).

ART.-Chinese ideas of painting differ widely from those obtaining in Western countries: the laws of perspective, and light and shade, are almost unknown, though the former is occasionally honoured with a slight recognition. Height usually represents distance in a Chinese painting, that is to say, distant objects are put at the top of the picture, and nearer ones below them, while little difference is made in the size. As regards light and shade, no shading is put into many Chinese landscapes, though M. Paléologue states that native artists have sometimes attained to the expression of the most artistic and delicate effects of light and shade, instancing the grand landscape school of the T'ang dynasty as producing perfect works under this class. The arrangement of objects and the grouping of persons in natural attitudes, would appear not to be taught, according to our ideas on the subject. Symmetry is the object aimed at; the subsidiary parts are treated with as much care as the principal; the smallest details are elaborated with as much minuteness as the most important. Figures are nearly always represented full-faced; and the heads are often stuck on at a forward angle of forty-five degrees to the rest of the body; this being the scholar's habitual attitude and one indicative of much study. What the Chinese delineator considers of prime importance is the representation of the status occupied by the subject: as his rank in the official service, or grade in the literary corps, or social position. The presentation of a living, feeling soul, revealed in its index, the face, sinks into utter insignificance in comparison with the exposition of the external advantages of rank and fortune, or of the tattered rags of the old beggar fluttering in the breeze. Rough outline sketches, in ink, of figures and landscapes are much admired. In these, impossible mountains, chaotic masses of rock, flowers, trees, and boats, are depicted in such a manner as to call forth but little enthusiasm from the Western observer.

'As draughtsmen, their forte lies in taking the portrait of some single portion of Nature's handiwork. Many of these they have analysed with great care, and so well studied as to hit off a likeness with a very few strokes of the pencil. There is a peculiarity among the Chinese which has risen from the command they have over the pencil-they hold it in nearly a perpendicular direction to the paper, and are therefore able, from the delicacy of its point, to draw lines of the greatest fineness, and, at the same time, from the elastic nature of the hairs, to make them of any breadth they please. The broad strokes for the eyelash and the beard are alike executed by a single effort of the pencil.'

It has been pointed out that the exigencies of Chinese writing demand an education of the eye and hand, analogous to that required in designing. The handling of the hair brushthe Chinese pen-every day gives a facility and readiness of touch and expression.

The Chinese artist has learned a lesson which has only within the last few years been understood by us in our natural history museums-he copies all the parts of a bird in detail, and then, it has been aptly said:—

He studies the attitudes, and the peculiar passions of which attitudes are the signs, and thus represents birds as they are in real life, ... though they may be rudely executed in some of their details. Nor is this fidelity confined to birds alone, neither is it a new advance in their art, as we find it recorded of Ts'ao Fuh-hing [Fu-hsing], a famous painter of the third century A.D., that, having painted a screen for the Sovereign, he added the representation of a fly so perfect to nature that the Emperor raised his hand to brush the fly off.'

A cat has been seen to go up to examine a bird which was drawn standing on a spray in a most natural manner. These stories point out one of the most striking characteristics of certain Chinese painting-its graphic character-and remind us of Apelles's horse which the living horses neighed to, as well as the other famous story of a horse trying to eat a sheaf of corn on the canvas. With equally minute care they faithfully copy flowers, bamboos, and trees, noting carefully the minute ramifications of branches, as well as the action of each particular kind of wind on the objects painted; while, however, all these points are being attended to with a patience worthy of the highest commendation, as it produces a sort of fidelity to nature, yet at the same time the whole perchance is vastly deficient in correspondence and proportion.' This entering into the mysteries of nature and the reproduction of some of them with an approach almost to photographic fidelity, scarcely to be

expected from them, judging by some of the other productions of their pencils, is of interest and use to the botanical student, since the illustrations in such a native work, for instance, as the great Materia Medica, the Pên ts'ao, give a far better idea from their, in many instances, great truthfulness, than the mere letter-press would convey to the foreign student. Their attempts at depicting animal life result in rude, uncouth forms, but the conventionality of the attitudes of the human figure frequently lends a charm which does not attach to many of their products. The proportion and grouping together of the component parts of a picture are defined by a conventional canon, to the rigid adherence of which is due much of the unreality so conspicuous in their attempts at portraying the human passions, and they have remained at the same imperfect development of this branch of their art for many centuries (this stage has been compared to that of Italian painting in the time of Giotto and Simone Memmi); added to which is their entire ignorance of anatomy, the result of this ignorance being often a caricature of the human body. At the same time all praise must be given to the delicacy of their colouring, which, without any scientific laws to guide them, they seem intuitively to know how to apply. They are very fond of their works of art, and the mansions of the wealthy are hung with scrolls, depicting landscapes and sprays of flowers, with birds, and insect life, etc. Even the poorer classes adorn their humbler dwellings with cheaper specimens of pictorial art, and scarcely a boat of any pretensions on the Canton River but is ornamented with a few pictures, while the sellers of sketches in black and white find a ready sale for their wares in the streets.

It is necessary, however, to remember that our commendation is awarded to purely native art, the bastard productions of those daubers who seem to thrive in Hongkong and some of the Treaty Ports being altogether beneath contempt.

The Chinese, in some localities, are clever at fresco or encaustic painting, which they employ upon their temples and better-class houses in the form of panels and friezes both internally and externally (See ARCHITECTURE). Never, so far as we can learn, have they made any use of oil as a medium for their pigments; but it must, of course, be remembered that the latter addition to be painter's resources was equally unknown in Europe down to the fifteenth century.'

The native pigments are very primitive, and their cakes, or sticks, of water-colour are on a par with the very cheapest toy outfits of an English juvenile. Their Chinese ink, however,

is admirable and superior to any other in the world. Their pencils and brushes, also, leave little to be desired, being exactly adapted to their manner of work. It would be impossible, however, for an English watercolourist to produce his effects with such tools, and it would be idle to expect the Celestial to make any advance in art as it is practised in Western countries until he throws over his conservatism and adopts the paper, colours, and brushes of modern Europe.

Religion, nature, history, and literature, have all inspired the Chinese artist with a more or less varying degree of success. If implicit credence were to be given to the accounts of the Chinese themselves, painting was first practised B.C. 2600, but the art in China has quite a venerable enough antiquity without ascribing to it such a hoary one. Mural decoration appears to have been the first application of it, and the Chinese Emperors frequently had the walls of their palaces so adorned. In the third century before the Christian era, paintings were made on bamboo and silk, whether pen and ink sketches, or in colour, it is difficult to say; but a great impetus was given to the art when, in the first century of our era, paper was invented.

'The first painter of whose labours we possess any definite record,' belongs to the third century of the Christian era, over six hundred years after the period of Zeuxis,' though Dr. Anderson, from whom we quote, informs us, that 'a passing allusion to a portrait is found in the works of Confucius.' The same authority says that the Chinese must have attained to some proficiency in the art of drawing before the Buddhist era: 'it is probable that the higher development of painting in China was due to the influence exercised by specimens of Indian and Greek art introduced with the Buddhist religion.' At the head of the list of Chinese painters stands then the name of Ts'ao Fuh-hing [Fu hsing] (the memory of those who preceded him having been lost), a retainer of the Emperor Wú Sun K'üan [Ch'üan, i.e., Ta Ti] (A.D. 229-251). He was 'famous for Buddhist pictures and sketches of Dragons,' and he is the hero of the marvellous story of the fly. Another story is that of a dragon which was painted by him and preserved until the Sung dynasty, when it produced rain in a time of drought. The second artist whose name has been preserved is that of Chang Sang-yíú [Sêng-yu]. He painted Buddhist pictures for the devout monarch Wú Tí' (A.D. 502–50). Anderson thus writes concerning him:

'It is doubtful whether any of his works are now in existence, but his style has been handed down by followers,