It was not only in the emperor’s court, at this epoch, that European music began to be known; many persons throughout all the empire, sought to pave the way to Imperial favor by studying the new art. The method of Father Pereira had been sent into each province by the emperor, and the ancient _Li_ were for a time eclipsed by the _Do, re, mi_, etc., of the “western barbarians.” It might have been a permanent reform, but for the fact that the Chinese had always been accustomed to associate their music in a peculiar manner, with virtue and morality; each tone represented some moral precept, each species of the eight varieties of sound represented to their mind some high thought or noble virtue; it was this association of ideas, which evoked the eulogies of Confucius, and it was this time-honored custom which prevented European music from obtaining any foothold among them. When, a short time after, Amiot endeavored to ingratiate himself with the Mandarins by means of his music, he failed utterly, through the same cause. He thus relates his effort:— “I understood music passably well; I played the traverse flute and the clavichord; I used all these little talents to make myself welcome to the Chinese. On different occasions during the first years of my stay in Pekin, I never failed to endeavor to convince those who heard me, that our music, excelled that of their own country.” It is to be remembered that these were educated persons, able to compare and to judge; persons of the first rank, who honoring the French missionaries with their kindness, came often to their abode to entertain themselves with them, with various matters relative to the sciences or arts cultivated in China. “The cyclops,” “The savages,”[102] the most beautiful sonatas, the most melodious airs of the flute, none of these made any impression on the Chinese. “I saw upon their countenances only a cold and vacant look, which announced to me that I had not touched them in the least. One day I asked them how they liked our music, and begged that they would tell me frankly what they thought. They answered in their politest way, that _our melodies were not made for their ears, nor their ears for our melodies_, it was not therefore surprising, they could not find beauties in our melodies, as they could in their own.”