The roofs of their houses are curved and drawn up like their features; they are copies of lids of baskets, tea-caddies, urns, or of caps and hats. The protruding parts are richly ornamented with dragons. The dragon with the Chinese is the prototype out of which man developed; the dragon is therefore the symbol of the imperial power. Whilst the Chinese are altogether deficient in painting, because they have no idea of perspective or shading, they certainly excel in the technical treatment of keramic works of art, especially in the paste, which they make of kaolin, a decomposed feldspathic granite. The forms of their genuine pottery are most primitive in outline; dishes, cups, plates, and bowls are cylindrically shaped, as are their bottles and jars. Our South Kensington Museum abounds in specimens illustrating this. Sharp naturalism and an exact reproduction of the forms of nature, without any skill in the conventional treatment of flowers, creepers, leaves, stems, fruits, and animals, prevail in all Chinese and Japanese works. The artist, if he intends to work in the Chinese style, must divest himself of all considerations for the higher esthetical principles of art; he must stoop to the tastes and delights of children, must study thoroughly their every-day customs and manners, enter into their mode of thinking, try to make the quaint quainter, and the grotesque still more grotesque. A big sun with thick rays in a corner to the right; some sharply-drawn trees in the middle; a bridge up in the clouds with a dog running over it; some children with large heads playing to the left; a bright stream marked with rough waves, through which fishes are peeping; the whole excellently finished so far as the lacquered work goes--and a Chinese tray is complete. The coloured enamel on keramic works, and their lacquered or varnished ware, notwithstanding their unimaginative naturalism and monstrously fantastic delineation, surpass anything we are capable of producing in the West of Europe. Their magnificent folding-screens, trays, tubs, wash-hand basins, toilet-cases, work-tables, perfume-cases, frames for looking-glasses; their jewel-tables--full of little drawers, secret nooks and corners, puzzling openings, and hidden shuttings--are so many additional proofs of their childish nature. They use the fret, which they have in common with the Mexicans, Peruvians, and Greeks. Whilst, however, the latter arrived at a continuous system of fret ornamentation, the Chinese still use it mostly fragmentarily, either one link after the other, or one above the other, without forming a continuous ornament.