Five is with them a holy number: they had five emperors during their Golden Age; there are five great principles on which they base the possibility of a regulated social existence, viz. humanity, justice, conformity, uprightness, and sincerity. They have five holy books: the Shoo-King (political precepts); the Y-King (a philosophy of emanations based on figures); the Shi-King (a collection of didactical odes and songs about 3,000 years old); the Li-King (a record of ceremonial customs and social manners); and the Yo-King (a book on music, regulating harmony on the most discordant principles). They have five domestic principles, five elements, five primitive colours, five seasons of the year, five ruling spirits, five planets, five points of the compass, five sorts of earth, five different precious stones, five degrees of punishment, five different kinds of dresses; and their whole principle of ornamentation is based on five points [Illustration: (five points forming a rectangle with one point in the middle)]. By uniting these five points they produce that ingenious system for the conventional treatment of flowers and animals, which has been divided by Owen Jones into-- _a._ The continuous stem system; _b._ The united fragmentary system; and _c._ The interspersed fragmentary system. In these three systems they observe the natural laws of radiation and tangential curvature. But in all their works of art appears the spectre of childishness, with wrinkles in its withered face. Their patterns in textile art are such as some people delight in for the sake of their quaint originality. They altogether neglect the laws of ornamentation; and we never know whether in ornamenting a vase they did not intend to dress a Chinese lady for a tea party, or whether in dressing a high-standing mandarin, or a lady in stiff brocade, they did not intend to ornament one of their peculiarly-shaped tea-pots. In fact their vases are ladies in brocade dresses, whilst their gentlemen and ladies look like ambulatory vases. We often see on a lady, ‘doves as big as bustards, cooing; flowers and trees growing on plates and vases upside down, and inside out.’ We see a mandarin strutting about, adorned with an embroidered tree with fifty different foliages. One screen is decorated with fishes with feathers, another with birds with fins, or monstrous dragons creep on the ground or fly in the air. Everything in art is done as it ought not to be done. It is as if some merry and mischievous hobgoblin had instructed the Chinese to make up a kind of artistic patchwork out of all the odds and ends of ornamental fancies, distorted figures, and incomprehensible combinations.