The capital of Southern China, called Quinsai, or Kinsai, by Marco Polo, a name signifying the “Celestial City,” was a place of prodigious magnitude, being, according to the reports of the Chinese, not less than one hundred miles in circumference. This rough estimate of the extent of Kinsai, though beyond doubt considerably exaggerated, is after all not so very incredible as may at first appear. Within this circumference, if the place was constructed after the usual fashion of a Chinese city, would be included parks and gardens of immense extent, vast open spaces for the evolutions of the troops, besides the ten market-places, each two miles in circumference, mentioned by Marco Polo, and many other large spaces not covered with houses. By these means Kinsai might have been nearly one hundred miles in circuit, without approaching London in riches or population. That modern travellers have found no trace of such amazing extent in Hang-chen, Kua-hing, or whatever city they determine Kinsai to have been, by no means invalidates the assertion of Marco Polo; for considering the revolutions which China has undergone, and the perishable materials of the ordinary dwellings of its inhabitants, we may look upon the space of nearly six hundred years as more than sufficient to have changed the site of Kinsai into a desert. Were the seat of government to be removed from Calcutta to Agra or Delhi, the revolution of one century would reduce that “City of Palaces,” to a miserable village, or wholly bury it in the pestilential bog from which its sumptuous but perishable edifices originally rose like an exhalation.