The Costume of China / Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese

THE COSTUME of CHINA by W. Alexander F.S.A. &c. China—Plate 1
ILLUSTRATED IN
FIFTY COLOURED ENGRAVINGS,
WITH DESCRIPTIONS.
BY WILLIAM ALEXANDER.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET
BY W. BULMER AND CO. CLEVELAND-ROW.
1814.
Exhibiting the various kinds of weapons, offensive and defensive, in use among the Chinese infantry, cavalry, artillery, and bowmen, arranged on a stand or frame of wood. One or more of these frames are commonly to be met with at the military posts and at the depôts of arms and guard-houses, close to the gates of their walled cities.
China—Plate 2
Kien Lung was the fourth Emperor of the Tartar dynasty, which now possesses the throne of China. When the annexed Sketch was taken he was eighty-three years of age, but had all the appearance of a hale, vigorous man of sixty. Indeed his whole life had been spent in the active discharge of public business, and in the violent exercise of hunting and shooting in the wild regions of Tartary, which he continued with unabated zeal almost to the period of life above mentioned. He always commenced public business at two or three in the morning, and gave audience to foreign ambassadors at that early hour, whether in winter or summer, and he generally retired to rest at sunset; and to this invariable habit of rising and retiring at an early hour, he attributed much of his healthy and vigorous constitution.