We visited the observatory, constructed by the Chinese under the direction of the Jesuits. The scientific instruments to be seen there are admirable. They are made of bronze, supported on feet of the same metal, in which all the fancies of Chinese art have been lavished. The contortions of these mountings, composed of dragons and grotesque monsters, produce a striking contrast to the regular forms of the spheres, the parallel lines and astronomical figures which they sustain at a great height in the air.
I have seen at Pekin, in the temples of the Mongolian lamas, or of the priests of Buddha, splendid enamels and objects of great value; but I have never found in China, nor even in Japan, where bronze is, certainly, turned to better account than in the Celestial Empire, anything so artistic, in the strict meaning of the term, as the apparatus of this observatory. The taste of the Chinese it must be admitted is very questionable. One may admire, especially, the colours of their porcelain, the soft hues of their ancient enamels, and the harmony of the tints in their embroidered stuffs; but in their designs, in the forms of their objects and personages, many faults and even repulsive monstrosities may be noticed. But the instruments of the Pekin Observatory are, in my opinion, above all criticism. Fancifulness certainly abounds therein, but it is only within just bounds: the supports I have just mentioned are so slender, so delicately worked, that they seem quite foreign and distinct from the spheres they sustain, and these indeed produce the illusion of being maintained by their proper force like real celestial worlds.
Before quitting this spot I took from the top a panoramic view of this immense capital, and the prospect extended over a considerable distance. The golden roofs of the merchants’ houses of the Tartar city were glittering with splendour in the sun; then I remarked the not less brilliant green porcelain roofs of the fortresses rising above the chief gates, the blue porcelain roofs of the pagodas, of the Temple of Heaven, and of the Temple of Agriculture, and then, particularly, the Imperial palace, covered with yellow porcelain.
The Imperial palace of China is the abode of mystery; a mystery no one can boast of having penetrated. It is a little spot, unknown and deserted, amid these teeming millions of human beings—a recess into which no European has ever entered, and wherein only a very limited number of Chinese can penetrate once in the twenty-four hours, and then only in the darkest hours of the night.
The audience which the Emperor gave a few years ago to the European ministers, and which made a considerable sensation, did not take place even in the palace. The Son of Heaven did not deign to show himself here to the ministers but in a pavilion so far removed from the mysterious palace that it is plainly visible from the marble bridge.
Many reports have circulated in Europe regarding the private life of the Emperors of China, and the internal regulations of the palace. M. Berthémy, the French minister in Japan, whom I had the honour to meet at Yokohama, and who had previously been in China for many years, said: “All that has been retailed about the interior of the Imperial palace of Pekin can only be a mere fable, for it is impossible for anyone to know anything about it. The only thing that seems to me likely, because it has been declared to me by all the mandarins, is that the Emperor is subjected to a severe etiquette, and that he would be immediately assassinated by his own guards if he attempted to set it aside.”
The sight of the yellow roofs of this palace produced on me a deep impression, and on reposing at my ease at the Embassy I compared in my mind the existence of this poor Emperor, a slave to etiquette, to our good king Saint Louis showing himself to his people and administering justice under an oak in the Bois de Vincennes. How many unhappy there are in this world in all the scales of the social hierarchy!
I shall say little of the Temple of Heaven, and of the Temple of Agriculture, because they are not interesting. The first especially is unworthy of the exalted name it bears. It is in an immense park surrounded with walls, in which chapels and pretty pavilions, covered with blue porcelain, are distributed, and where a subdued light penetrates through blinds composed of little tubes of blue glass placed parallel. A platform of white marble is raised in the middle of the park, and it is here the Emperor occasionally comes to offer with his own hand sacrifices to the Divinity.
The curious portion of the Temple of Agriculture and its precincts is a field where, every year, on a certain day, the Emperor, holding in his hand a plough, makes a furrow along the ground, as if to give an example to his subjects. The remainder of the field is afterwards ploughed by the mandarins. This ceremony shows how much agriculture, the principal source of the wealth of the country, is honoured in China. With their two annual harvests of corn, the Chinese succeed in providing bread at a moderate price, and by exporting their tea and their rice they draw gold into their country from all parts of the world. Their method of cultivation very much resembles the Egyptian system. They divide their fields into little squares, around which water is conducted for irrigation to all parts. This water flows from numerous canals winding through the country, and is supplied by contrivances worked by Chinese labourers like the Egyptian shadoufs. For the cultivation of rice the little squares are surrounded with an embankment high enough to maintain over the field a sheet of water several inches deep. The land thus disappears completely. When I visited the rice fields in the month of May, the seed, lately sown, hardly sprouted above the surface of the water.
The tea is a little shrub, a foot and a half to two feet high. The leaves are gathered from May to August, according to the species, and also according to the quality required. There are in China growths of tea as there are in France growths of wine. The nature of the soil and the different kinds of plants produce the varieties known to the trade. The most esteemed kind is known by the name of yellow tea. It is the ordinary drink of the Emperor of China and the Emperor of Russia.