The emperor’s daughters never succeed to the throne. They are usually married to Tartar princes, and mandarins of high rank, who always consider such an alliance a mark of distinction. The great men of the Celestial Empire keep their women most carefully concealed from all eyes but their own. If there is occasion to remove them from one place of residence to another, they are conveyed in close carriages, with gauze drawn over the small windows, and a eunuch to guard them on each side. On state occasions, they are sometimes admitted to the theatre, where they are concealed behind a screen of close lattice-work. The scenes represented on the Chinese stage are said to be so indecent and disgusting, that European spectators are absolutely driven away. They have no actresses. Female characters are performed by beardless young men, in the costume of women. The ladies amuse themselves with embroidery, music, dancing, puppet-shows, and painting birds, flowers, and insects, on rice-paper, or thin gauze. Some of the emperors, willing to gratify the curiosity of their wives, built within the parks of their palaces miniature towns, to represent, on a small scale, the most remarkable objects in Pekin. The gardens belonging to the imperial palaces are exceedingly picturesque and beautiful. Here the princes spend many tranquil hours, while their wives play on musical instruments, and their children frolic around them. Chinese education consists principally in learning certain ceremonials of behavior; such as what kind of salutation to make to a superior, what to an inferior, how to give a present, and how to receive one. When an emperor dies, his widows cannot marry again. They are removed to a palace peculiarly appropriated to their use, and never again allowed to leave it. It was formerly customary to immolate a number of slaves on the grave of an emperor, or prince; but this has given place to the harmless custom of burning images of tinfoil, cut in the human form.