e mirrors with Graeco-Bactrian designs, a conclusive proof of the
external influences brought to bear upon Chinese art, are also
attributed to the Han epoch.

The troubled period between A.D. 400 and A.D. 960, in spite of the
interval of activity under the T'ang dynasty, produced, it would seem,
but few bronzes, and those few were of no distinct or noteworthy
style. Under the Sung dynasty the arts revived, and to this time some
of the most splendid specimens of inlaid work belong--pieces of
workmanship and taste no less perfect than that of the Japanese, in
which the gold and silver of the earlier work are occasionally
reinforced with malachite and lapis-lazuli. The coming of Kublai Khan
and the Yuen dynasty (1280-1367) once more brought the East into
contact with the West, and to this time we may assign certain fine
pieces of Persian form such as pilgrim bottles. The vessels bearing
Arabic inscriptions belong to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), with which
the modern history of Chinese art begins.

The work done while the Ming dynasty was still young provides the
student of Chinese art with many problems, and in one or two cases
even the South Kensington authorities assign to pre-Christian times
pieces that are clearly of Ming workmanship. The tendency of the
period was eclectic and archaistic. The products of earlier days were
reproduced with perfect technical command of materials, and with
admirable taste; it is indeed by an excess of these qualities that
archaistic Ming work may be distinguished from the true archaic. In
fig. 15 we see how the Ming bronze worker took an earlier Buddhistic
form of vase and gave it a new grace that amounted almost to artifice.
A parallel might be found among the products of the so-called _art
nouveau_ of to-day, in which old designs are revived with just that
added suavity or profusion of curvature that robs them of character.
Fig. 16 again might be mistaken almost for a piece of the Chow
dynasty, were not the grandeur of its form modified by just so much
harmony in the curvature of the body and neck, and by just so much
finish in the details as to rob the design of the old majestic vigour
and to mark it as the splendid effort of an age of culture, and not
the natural product of a period of strength.

It is, however, in the inlaid pieces that the difference tells most
clearly. Here we find the monstrous forms of the Sha