ture suggesting, sometimes remotely, the thought enshrined in the poem.
Such were the conditions upon which Hui Tsung instituted examinations,
following which the doors of the Academy were open to the victor. He gave,
for example, as subject for a competition a verse saying, "The bamboos
envelop the inn beyond the bridge," which suggested a landscape with
flowing water, a rustic bridge thrown across the stream, a cluster of
bamboos on the bank, a "winehouse" half hidden in the verdure. All the
competitors, the records say, set to work drawing with minute care the inn
which they made the essential feature of the picture. Only one implied its
presence by showing, above a dense cluster of bamboos, the little banner
which in China denotes the presence of a "winehouse." Two verses of
another poem in which allusion was made to the red flowers of spring were
interpreted by the representation of a beautiful young girl dressed in
red, leaning on a balustrade, for according to Chinese ideas, the thoughts
of young men in spring turn there, as elsewhere, toward thoughts of love.

[Illustration: PLATE XX. FLOWERS AND INSECTS
Ming Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.]

We have here an example of the subtle allusions, at times profoundly
poetic, with which Chinese painting abounds. But these things retain their
value and charm only in so far as they depend on a free play of mind or
upon personal, living sentiments. As accepted conventions regulated in an
academic competition, repeated with sustained effort and without
enthusiasm, their rigid monotony becomes intolerable. Such was the
ultimate fate of that ability to express by half meanings, to suggest
without directly stating, to which the Sung painters attached so great an
importance. The day it was understood that a little banner fluttering over
bamboos indicated the presence of a "winehouse" in a sylvan retreat, or
that a young girl dressed in red symbolized the crimson blooming of a
garden pink in springtime, banners and young girls dressed in red were
seen in paintings innumerable to the point of satiety.

Thus were established those dry conventions of a somewhat stupid erudition
which were so much the fashion in the academic painting of the Ming and
the Ch'ing periods, and whose great success repressed the artistic
aspirations of a people. Under these influences was rapidly assembled a
complete arsenal of allegories, allusions and symbols that gave birth to
an art which was