98 CULTURE OF CHARACTERISTIC EXOTIC PLANTS. 



ancestors, according to the rites prescribed by Confucius, 

 and the pious remembrance of departed monarchs and 

 warriors, are the more special objects of this remarkable 

 poem. A long enumeration of the wild plants, and of the 

 animals which enliven the district, is tedious, as didactic 

 poetry always is ; but the weaving together the impression 

 received from the visible landscape (which appears only 

 as the background of the picture,) with the more ele- 

 vated objects taken from the world of ideas, with the 

 fulfilment of religious rites, and with allusions to great 

 historical events, gives a peculiar character to the whole 

 composition. The consecration of mountains, so deeply 

 rooted among the Chinese, leads the author to introduce 

 careful descriptions of the aspect of inanimate nature, to 

 which the Greeks and the Romans shewed themselves so little 

 alive. The forms of the several trees, their mode of growth, 

 the direction of the branches, and the shape of the leaves, 

 are dwelt on with marked predilection. ( 138 ) 



As I do not participate in that distaste to Chinese 

 literature which is too slowly disappearing amongst us, 

 and as I have dwelt, perhaps, at too much length on the 

 work of a cotemporary of Frederic the Great, it is the more 

 incumbent on me to go back to a period seven centuries and 

 a half earlier, for the purpose of recalling the poem of " The 

 Garden/' by See-ma-kuang, a celebrated statesman. It is 

 true that the pleasure grounds described in this poem are, 

 in part, overcrowded with numerous buildings, as was the 

 case in the ancient villas of Italy; but the minister also 

 describes a hermitage, situated between rocks, and sur- 

 rounded by lofty fir trees. He praises the extensive prospect 

 over the wide river Kiang, with its many vessels : " here he 



