e Confucian
Temple--the most beautifully-finished temple I have seen in China. We
have accustomed ourselves to speak in ecstacies of the wood-carving in
the temples of Japan, but not even in the Sh[=o]gun chapels of the Shiba
temples in Tokyo have I seen wood-carving superior to the exquisite
delicacy of workmanship displayed in the carving of the Imperial dragons
that frame with their fantastic coils the large Confucian tablet of this
temple. Money has been lavished on this building. The inclined marble
slabs that divide the terrace steps are covered with fanciful tracery;
the parapets of the bridge are chiselled in marble; sculptured images of
elephants with howdahs crown the pillars of the marble balustrades; the
lattice work under the wide eaves is everywhere beautifully carved.
Lofty pillars of wood support the temple roofs. They are preserved by a
coating of hemp and protected against fire by an outer coating of
plaster stained the colour of the original wood. Gilding is used as
freely in the decoration of the grand altar and tablets of this temple,
as it is in a temple in Burma.

On a hill overlooking the city and valley is the Temple to the God of
Literature. The missionary and I climbed to the temple and saw its
pretty court, its ancient bronze censer, and its many beautiful flowers,
and then sat on the terrace in the sun and watched the picturesque
valley spread out before us.

As we descended the hill again, a lad, who had attached himself to us,
offered to show us the two common pits in which are cast the dead bodies
of paupers and criminals. The pits are at the foot of the hill,
open-mouthed in the uncut grass. With famine in the city, with people
dying at that very hour of starvation, there was no lack of dead, and
both pits were filled to within a few feet of the surface. Bodies are
thrown in here without any covering, and hawks and crows strip them of
their flesh, a mode of treating the dead grateful to the Parsee, but
inexpressibly hateful to the Chinese, whose poverty must be overwhelming
when he can be found to permit it. Pigtails were lying carelessly about
and skulls separated from the trunk. Human bones gnawed by dogs were to
be picked up in numbers in the long grass all round the hill; they were
the bones of the dead who had been loosely buried close to the surface,
through which dogs--the domestic dogs one met afterwards in the
street--had scraped their way. Many, too, were the bones of dead
ch