n this respect is similar to that of Leonardo da Vinci in
his "Treatise on Painting."

[2] The Chinese terms are _Li Chou_ for a vertical painting and
_Heng P'i_ for a horizontal painting.--TRANSLATOR.

[Illustration: PLATE III. KWANYIN. EIGHTH TO TENTH CENTURIES
Painting brought from Tun-huang by the Pelliot Expedition.
The Louvre, Paris.]

III. DIVISION OF SUBJECTS

The Chinese divide the subjects of painting into four principal classes,
as follows:

Landscape.
Man and Objects.
Flowers and Birds.
Plants and Insects.

Nowhere do we see a predominant place assigned to the drawing or painting
of the human figure. This alone is sufficient to mark the wide difference
between Chinese and European painting.

The exact name for _Landscape_ is translated by the words _mountain and
water picture_. They recall the ancient conception of Creation on which
the Oriental system of the world is founded. The mountain exemplifies the
teeming life of the earth. It is threaded by veins wherein waters
continuously flow. Cascades, brooks and torrents are the outward evidence
of this inner travail. By its own superabundance of life, it brings forth
clouds and arrays itself in mists, thus being a manifestation of the two
principles which rule the life of the universe.

The second class, _Man and Objects_, must be understood principally as
concerning man, his works, his belongings, and, in a general sense, all
things created by the hand of man, in combination with landscape. This was
the convention in early times when the first painters whose artistic
purpose can be formulated with certainty, portrayed the history of the
legendary beings of Taoism,--the genii and fairies dwelling amidst an
imaginary Nature. The records tell us, to be sure, that the early masters
painted portraits, but it was at a later period that _Man and Objects_
composed a class distinct from _Landscape_, a period responsible for those
ancestral portraits painted after death, which are almost always
attributable to ordinary artisans. Earlier they endeavored to apply to
figure painting the methods, technique and laws established for an
ensemble in which the thought of nature predominated. Special rules
bearing on this subject are sometimes found of a very early date but there
is no indication that they were collected into a definite system until the
end of the seventeenth century. Up to the present time our