March 27, 1885.] 



SCIENCE. 



251 



liam P. Shinn, in the sketch of his life in the 

 Railroad gazette, says, " His last professional 

 work, and that which most fully illustrates the 

 extraordinary character of his professional 

 ability, and the esteem in which he was held 

 by his engineering contemporaries, was his 

 emplo3'ment as a consulting engineer on the 

 proposed new Croton aqueduct. . . . That he 

 should be equal to this work at the age of 

 eigtuYv-six was sufficientl}* remarkable ; but that 

 he should be considered as worthy of being con- 

 sulted by men themselves veterans in the pro- 

 fession, is a still more extraordinary evidence 

 of the exceptional character of the man." 



His health and his faculties remained unim- 

 paired till near the close of his life ; and he 

 died of old age, in his ninetieth year. 



THE NEW PALACE AT SOUL. 



Such is the name of that collection of grounds 

 and buildings in Soul which is at present the 

 abode of the reigning sovereign of Korea. 

 Strictly speaking, the title is in both parts a 

 misnomer : for the place so called is neither 

 new, nor is it exactly what in western parlance 

 would be styled a palace ; and yet to Korean 

 thought it is both. Its age is comparative 

 merety, as indeed must be that of every thing 

 which does not contain within itself a term of 

 life. In this case, the comparison is with what 

 is now known, in the same antithesis, as the 

 Old Palace. But there is also a certain abso- 

 lute justice in this last name ; for the Old 

 Palace could not possibly be any older where 

 it is. It is coeval with the beginning of the 

 present state of things, dating from the found- 

 ing of the cit\- of Soul, now hard upon the 

 five-hundredth anniversary. The New Palace 

 was laid out some hundred years later, and 

 is therefore about four centuries old at the 

 present time. In consequence of being later 

 built, it occupies a somewhat less honorable 

 position than the older one ; for even position 

 has its allotted ceremonial in Korea. North, 

 east, west, and south, — this is the relative 

 rank of the four cardinal points. In etiquette 

 the sovereign always faces the south, and 

 his subjects look to the north. Following 

 the same rule, the post of honor generally, on 

 all occasions of ceremony, such as dinners or 

 feasts, is at the northern end of the room. A 

 singular practice this, of determining by exte- 

 rior terrestrial phenomena the etiquette of en- 



tertainments carried on within four walls, which 

 are themselves in no wise subjected to orienta- 

 tion, and may face any direction indifferently, 

 according to the fanc} T of the owner. 



When the city of Soul was laid out, there- 

 fore, the palace was given the post of honor, — 

 the northern end of the space enclosed by the 

 city's wall ; and, when the second palace came 

 to be built, it was placed as nearly north as 

 was possible consistently with the position of 

 the older one, to whose left, reckoned as facing 

 the city, it lay. 



Exactly what was the origin of this custom 

 of allotting a rank among themselves to the 

 cardinal points, it would be interesting to 

 know. We may, perhaps, look to some rude 

 astronomy for an explanation. Like the p}'ra- 

 mids, it may, in its way, be the relic of an 

 old stud} r of the stars. Certainly early man 

 could hardly fail to be struck by the sight, that, 

 while all else in the heavens moved, the pole 

 alone remained in dignified repose. The Ko- 

 reans themselves suggest a more earthly origin 

 for the practice. Because the south is the 

 bright, the warm, and therefore the happy, 

 region of the earth, they say, the king sits so 

 that he may always face it. When we call to 

 mind the cold winters of those lands whence 

 the far-eastern peoples migrated, as well as 

 those to which they afterwards came and now 

 inhabit, we realize how instinctive this turning 

 in body, as in thought, toward the south, would 

 naturally be. 



The New Palace was originally built as a 

 residence for the crown prince, or, to speak 

 more accurately, the heir apparent ; for in Ko- 

 rea the heir to the throne is chosen b}- the king 

 during his life, and is not necessarily born 

 to the position, though it is customary for his 

 majesty to so designate his eldest son. This 

 is no doubt a reason for the superiority, archi- 

 tecturally, of the other, the older one. But 

 the newer possesses a charm of its own, first 

 from the uneven character of the ground over 

 which it rambles, and secondly from being 

 much less artificially laid out. It is also some- 

 what the larger of the two in the extent of 

 ground it covers. The high wall which sur- 

 rounds it encloses about ten thousand acres. 

 In this wall are set gates at various points, four- 

 teen of them in all. There is no S3'mmetry in 

 their arrangement ; nor is there any in the line 

 of wall itself, which meanders about in so aim- 

 less a fashion as to cause surprise when at last 

 it ends by meeting itself again. The gates, or 

 archwa3's, are quite as various in size and honor 

 as they are uns}-mmetrical in position, — a fact 

 typified b} r their names, which range through 



