10 ON CHINESE GARDENS. 



or different coloured gauze, to tinge the light, and give a glow 

 to the objects in the apartment. 



All these buildings are furnished at a very great expence, not 

 only with the necessary moveables, but with pictures, sculptures, 

 embroideries, trinkets, and pieces of clock work of great value, 

 being some of them very large, composed of many ingenious 

 movements, enriched with ornaments of gold, intermixed with 

 pearls diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other gems. 



Besides the different structures already mentioned, they have 

 some built in large trees, and disposed amongst the branches like 

 nests of birds, being finished on the inside with many beautiful 

 ornaments, and pictures, composed of feathers, some they have 

 likewise made in the form of Persian tents, others built of roots 

 and pollards, put together with great taste : and others, which are 

 called Miau Ting, or Halls of the Moon, being of prodigious size 

 and composed each of one single vaulted room, made in the 

 shape of a hemisphere, the concave of which is artfully painted 

 in imitation of a nocturnal sky, and pierced with an infinite num- 

 ber of little windows, made to represent the moon and stars, be- 

 ing filled of tinged glass, that admits the light in the quantities 

 necessary to spread over the whole interior fabric the pleasing 

 gloom of a fine summer's night. 



The pavements of these rooms are sometimes laid oub in par- 

 terres of flowers ; amongst which are placed many rural seats 

 made of fine formed branches, varnished red to represent coral ; 

 but oftenest their bottom is full of clear running water, which 

 falls in rills from the sides of a rock in the centre ; many little 

 islands float upon its surface, and move around as the current 

 directs, some of them covered with tables for the banquet, others 

 with seats, and other furniture, for various uses. 



To these Halls of the Moon the Chinese princes retire with 

 their favourite women, whenever the heat and intense light of 

 the summer's day becomes disagreeable to them ; and here they 

 feast, and give a loose to every sort of voluptuous pleasure. 



No nation ever equalled the Chinese in the splendour and 

 number of their garden structures. We are told, by father At - 

 tiret, that in one of the imperial gardens, near Pekin, called 

 Yven MingYven, there are besides the palace, which is of itself 

 a city, four hundred pavilions, all so different in their architec- 

 ture, that each seems the production of a different country. 



(To be contimiPil. 



