Leaving aside the few broad streets, one frequently comes across immense open spaces, whose centres are generally occupied by a huge dunghill. The narrow little streets that branch out in all directions can be divided into two classes—those which border on the three or four principal commercial thoroughfares, which, like them, are lined with shops, but are scarcely broad enough to allow of the passage of a single cart, although they are thronged from morning to night by a seething, noisy crowd; and the silent and deadly dull private streets, where the dwelling-houses are to be found. On either side runs a gray wall, whose monotony is broken at intervals by a series of shabby little doors. If any one of these happens to be open, one can only perceive from the street a small courtyard a few feet square, and another dead wall, beyond which is the inner courtyard, shut off from all observation, and on which open all the windows of these singular dwellings, not one of which is more than one story high, and always protected by a gray double-tiled roof, usually ornamented at the four corners by some grotesque stone beast or other, but never turned up at the ends as are invariably those of the temples and the monuments. There is no movement whatever in these streets. A few children play before the doors, a dog or so strays about in the road, and now and again a coolie or an itinerant merchant, with two baskets suspended from a pole across his shoulders, breaks the silence by a shrill cry; sometimes a donkey or a cart passes along but fails to enliven the deadly quiet of the street, which is so still and monotonous that one might almost imagine one’s self in a village instead of in one of the most populous cities in the world. The scene changes entirely when Peking is seen from the heights of the walls which form the only agreeable promenade in the capital, to whose summits ascends neither the mud nor the stench of this dirtiest of cities. The eye wanders pleasantly over a forest of fine trees, for every house has one or two in its courtyard, and barely a glimpse of the offensive streets is to be had: only the gray roofs of the little houses; and thus Peking looks for all the world like an immense park, from whose midst rise the yellow roofs of the Imperial Palace, and to the northern extremity of the city, a wooded height called the Coal Mountain, surmounted by a pagoda.