The musical accompaniment of the performance is no less interesting. Contrary to the generally accepted idea that the Chinese have no feeling for music, I venture to think that Chinese music, although it may be discordant and unpleasing to the European ear, is not without great merits. We should not forget that the Chinese musical scale is set quite differently from ours, and is offensive to us chiefly because it is unfamiliar. But notwithstanding its deafening shrillness, it has great rhythmical power; and after all it only sounds harsh to us on account of its complexity. It must not be forgotten that their musical tones are not, as in the West, divided into two, but into four parts. In fact, they have not only half, but third and fourth gradations. The same with regard to their plastic art--the foreigner is easily apt to consider the external form only. He appreciates or rejects it according as it comes up to our Western standard of beauty or not, but does not stop to look at it from the national cultural point of view. And yet it is impossible to understand Chinese art without doing so. In China art was confined to experts, while in Japan it acquired an ever-increasing popular character. But the Chinese is by far the higher form of art. The Chinese have always been the teachers and pioneers in all matters of thought and creative genius in the Far East. Architecture, sculpture, painting, with all their various ramifications, date back to the remote ages of Chinese antiquity. What we have on record of the time of the first emperors gives us some idea of their refinement and of the art treasures then already in existence, and of still greater value in this respect are the few known monuments of the Shung Dynasty and of the subsequent Mongol period. Interesting above all are remains of buildings dating back to the Ming Age, which still exist in considerable numbers. Chinese art surprises one principally on account of its force and of the originating power manifested by it. In their colossal structures we chiefly admire the height of the pagodas, the length of the bridges; we are struck by the earnestness of the conception, the magnitude of the design, the masterful execution, the concentration of thought; all these appeal to us even now, in their dilapidated condition. The Imperial Palace at Pekin, although in ruins, is still one of the most magnificent structures in the world. And the same might be said of all other branches of art. We see it in the old bronze statues, in the delicate porcelain work, the exquisite carvings, and the precious cut stones. These relics in themselves may leave us cold, design and colour may not be to our taste, but the artistic idea, and above all the artistic ideal, underlying all these masterpieces, and the power of execution, cannot fail to impress any one at all interested in art.