e top,
around which are nine stones in the first circle, eighteen in the
second, twenty-seven in the third, etc., and eighty-one in the ninth,
or last circle. The Emperor kneels on the circular stone, surrounded by
the circles of stones, then by the circles of the terraces, and finally
by the horizon, and thus seems to himself and his retinue to be in the
centre of the universe, his only walls being the skies, and his only
covering, the shining dome.

There are no images of any kind connected with the temple or the
worship, the only offerings being a bullock, the various productions of
the soil, and a cylindrical piece of jade about a foot long, formerly
used as a symbol of sovereignty. Twelve bundles of cloth are offered to
Heaven, and only one to each of the emperors, and to the sun and moon.
The bullocks must be two years old, the best of their kind, without
blemish, and while they were formerly killed by the Emperor they are
now slaughtered by an official appointed for that purpose.

The covered altar is, I think, the most beautiful piece of architecture
in China. It is smaller than the one already described but has erected
upon it a lofty, circular triple-roofed temple ninety-nine feet in
height, roofed with blue tiles, the eaves painted in brilliant colours
and protected from the birds by a wire netting. In the centre,
immediately in front of the altar, is a circular stone, as in the open
altar. The ceiling is covered with gilded dragons in high relief, and
the whole is supported by immense pillars. It was this building that
was struck by lightning in 1890, but it was restored during the ten
years that followed. Being made the camp of the British during the
occupation of 1900, it received some small injuries from curio seekers,
but none of any consequence. The Sikh soldiers who died during this
period were cremated in the furnace connected with the open altar.

The Chinese have been an agricultural people for thirty centuries or
more, and this characteristic is embodied in the Temple of Agriculture,
which occupies a park of not less than three hundred and twenty acres
of city property opposite the Temple of Heaven. It has four great
altars, with their adjacent halls, to the spirits of Heaven, Earth, the
Year, and the Ancestral Husbandman, Shen Nung, to whom the temple is
dedicated. It was used as the camp of the American soldiers in 1900,
and was well cared for. At one time some of the soldiers upset one of
the