Although not the most ancient city in the Celestial Empire, Peking is an epitome of the rest of China, together with its ancient civilization and its present stagnation and decadence. It belongs to a very different type from the cities of Europe, or even of the Moslem world, and the sight of its immense wall and successive enclosures, which divide it into four distinct parts, reminds one of Nineveh or Babylon. In the centre is the ‘Forbidden’ or ‘Purple City,’ about a league in length from north to south, and a quarter of a league in width, containing the palaces of the Emperor and Empress Dowager, and the gardens and the residences of a swarm of parasites numbering, it is said, between six or eight thousand persons, inclusive of guards, concubines, eunuchs, functionaries, gardeners and other attendants upon the Imperial harem. The only Europeans who are allowed to cross the sacred threshold of the Purple City are the members of the Diplomatic Corps, to whom the Emperor gives audience on New Year’s Day, as well as since quite recently on the occasions of their arrival or taking leave. Around the Purple City extends the Imperial City, its walls painted pink, which in its turn is surrounded by the Tatar City, a rectangle of 4 miles in length, by 3 miles in width, whose sides face the cardinal points. Its colossal walls are 50 feet high, and at their summit are 50 feet wide. Their external fronts consist of two strong brick walls, rising from a substructure of stone. The interior is filled up with earth, and the summit, covered with flagstones, forms a walk bordered by embattled stone parapets. Bastions project outwards, and huge pavilions built of brick, pierced with many balistraria, and coated with highly varnished coloured tiles, ornament its four corners and gates. It rises only 99 feet above the ground, beyond which height it is never allowed to build, lest the flight of the good spirits might be inconvenienced thereby. This magnificent rampart, which to the north-east and to the west rises abruptly from the midst of the country, Peking having no suburbs, presents a most imposing aspect; and it is not less impressive when beheld from any one of the half-moons, which are very vast, and are built before the various gates, but which, owing to the height of the embattled walls which surround them on all sides, each of which is surmounted by a massive brick pavilion, look like wells.