Although the Chinese have existed as a nation, continuously for
between two and three thousand years, if not longer, and at a very
early period had arrived at a high state of artistic and scientific
cultivation, yet none of their buildings with which we are acquainted
has any claim on our attention because of its antiquity. Several
reasons may be assigned for this, the principal being that the Chinese
seem to be as a race singularly unsusceptible to all emotions.
Although they reverence their dead ancestors, yet this reverence never
led them, as did that of the Egyptians, Etruscans, and other nations,
to a lavish expenditure of labour or materials, to render their tombs
almost as enduring as the everlasting hills. Though waves of religious
zeal must have flowed over the country when Confucius inculcated his
simple and practical morality and gained an influential following, and
again when Buddhism was introduced and speedily became the religion of
the greater portion of the people, their religious emotion never led
them, as it did the Greeks and the Mediaeval builders, to erect grand
and lasting monuments of sacred art. When most of the Western nations
were still barbarians, the Chinese had attained a settled system of
government, and were acquainted with numerous scientific truths which
we have prided ourselves on rediscovering within the last two
centuries; but no thought ever seems to have occurred to them, as it
did to the Romans, of commemorating any event connected with their
life as a nation, or of handing down to posterity a record of their
great achievements. Peaceful and prosperous, they have pursued the
even tenor of their way at a high level of civilisation certainly, but
at a most monotonous one.

The Buddhist temples of China have a strong affinity to those of
India. The largest is that at Honan, the southern suburb of Canton.
This is 306 ft. long by 174 ft. wide, and consists of a series of
courts surrounded by colonnades and cells for the _bonzes_ or priests.
In the centre of the courtyard is a series of pavilions or temples
connected by passages, and devoted to the worship of the idols
contained in them. On each side of the main court, against the outer
wall, is another court, with buildings round it, consisting of kitchen
and refectories on the one side, and hospital wards on the other. It
is almost certain that this is a reproduction of the earlier forms of
chaityas and viharas which existed in India,