Use was, at the beginning, the motive for the production of all fictile dishes; and china was at first, and it has always been, made for the purposes of the table. Twelve small dishes of fine porcelain were presented to Mrs. Burlingame while at Peking; and the high compliment was enhanced by the fact that they were sent to her unwashed after they had been eaten from by the Chinese owner. The paste and glaze are excellent, and the decoration of the outsides exquisite; but the insides show painting of a much commoner type. A gift of this kind is considered the height of courtesy in China, where the visitor is treated as a friend. In Chinese houses are found decorative pieces of the highest excellence and value. It is no uncommon thing for a piece of rare china to sell for a thousand dollars there. Many of them bear inscriptions, such as: "A precious thing to offer;" "Splendid, like the gold of the house of Jade;" "I am the friend of Yu-Tchouen." The chrysanthemo-pæonienne, the customary decoration, while most in use, is, so far as I know, never seen on dinner-services sent to us. I may ask attention to a characteristic of all the best Oriental art: _it is not imitative_--not absolutely a copy. The artist seizes the _spirit_, the action, the color, of a bird or flower, and, by a few fine, keen strokes, fastens them upon the china. No attempt is made to display a botanical or ornithological specimen. All is free, bold, effective--a sketch, but not a slovenly one. It is not easy for words to explain this. Now, the methods of the Occidental and civilized peoples, as we call them, are the reverse of this. At Sèvres and Dresden, for example, is to be seen the most elaborate, careful, and detailed penciling or imitation of a flower, or a face, or a landscape, requiring extreme and persistent attention and labor. This is copying--the _spirit_ is rarely seized; the other is art, and is certainly the highest and the most satisfactory. The Oriental feels; The Occidental reasons. The Oriental perceives and creates; The Occidental criticises and copies. Herein lies a supreme difference, sufficient to explain why so much of the Oriental china touches the imagination, and why the European china so rarely does. The Oriental leads us away out of the region of the real and the commonplace, into a state of ideal and spiritual-sensuous art. He is never without body, the real part, the base of all life and art; but he has glorified it by a display of the fine and subtile essence which may be called its soul. This is not always so. Often he is most clumsy and rude in form, and common in decoration; but, when he is an _artist_, he is the finest we know of. It is probable that the Chinese had some blue equivalent to cobalt [Illustration: FIG. 107.--_From Mrs. Burlingame's Collection._]