THE CERAMIC ART IN CHINA. 421 



whole surface of the piece becomes diapered with veins and streaked 

 colorations, changing and capricious as the flame of spirits, the red 

 oxydulate, passing by violet into pale blue and to the green protoxyde, 

 evaporates itself even completely upon certain projections, which 

 become white, and thus furnishes happy accidental combinations.* 

 The supernatural changes are either of color, as when a piece of porce- 

 lain is taken from the kiln having developed a patch of some new color 

 in a natural shape, or of form, "as when some unusually large slabs 

 were requisitioned by one of the Ming emperors, which were trans- 

 formed into beds and boats, with equipage complete, and forthwith 

 broken up by the startled potters, as gravely reported by the official 

 in charge by way of excuse for their absence." t In the Buddhist tem- 

 ple Pao-kuo-ssu in Peking is a famous yao-pien image of Yuanyin, a 

 finely designed figure enamelled in colors, light blue, crimson, yellow, 

 and two shades of brown; of which, from an ode from his pen engraved 

 on the shrine, the Emperor Chienlung says the goddess descended into 

 the kiln to fashion an exact likeness of herself. 



The reference to the introduction to " the French method of painting" 

 is of so interesting a nature as to merit more detailed consideration. 



The Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century gained for them- 

 selves a position of dignity and influence beside the Dragon throne such 

 as no foreigner before or since has succeeded in attaining. This position, 

 and a tolerance which saw nothing incompatible with the Catholic re- 

 ligion in the cherished observance of the Chinese — in the payment of 

 official honors to the sage Confucius and in the worship of ancestors — 

 caused a remarkable spread of Catholicism, which, owing to the labors 

 of Father Ricci and his successors, had already established itself under 

 the Ming dynasty, counting among its members many officials and the 

 consort of the last of the line, who proclaimed himself emperor in the 

 Kwangtung (Canton) province. But Pope Clement XPs bull Ex ilia 

 die, confirming an earlier bull on the same subject dated the 4th Novem- 

 ber, 1704, by deciding that these observances were incompatible with 

 Catholic belief, aroused violent anger on the part of the Emperor 

 K'anghsi and dealt a blow to the missions from which they have never 

 recovered. The emperor died before the legate especially sent to China 

 to carry out the bull could perform his promise to endeavor to persuade 

 the Pope to modify its terms ; and decrees of great severity were issued 

 against Christianity by his successors, Youngcheng and Chienlung, to 

 which Pope Benedict XIV replied in 1742, by issuing a bull deciding this 

 unfortunate question in its narrowest sense. The severity of the im- 

 perial decree was, however, mitigated in favor of the missionaries at 

 court — at first Jesuits, and after the dissolution of that order Lazarists ; 

 and a European religieuse continued to be a director of the board of 

 astronomy down to 1814. 



* Jacquemart : " History of the Ceramic Art," translated by Mrs. Pallier, p. 50. 

 tDr. Bushell: Letter in North China Herald, May 12, 1888. 



