The stringed instruments which are of Chinese origin are but few in number, and they are not capable of producing any great volume of sound. They have several forms of guitar—a “balloon guitar,” a “moon guitar,” and an octagonal guitar. These possess four strings each, and are fitted with frets, and are struck either by the finger nail or by a plectrum. They have also a three stringed guitar with a long neck, but without frets. But compared with European instruments of the same class, they are poor and rude, both in tone and workmanship, and scarcely seem to have advanced beyond the primitive condition as to musical value. Similarly we notice their so-called violins, consisting of a bowl of some kind—half a cocoanut shell, or part of a gourd, or hollow piece of bamboo—to which a long bent neck is fitted, and with a drum kind of top of snake-skin covering the open bowl. The bow used is little more than a bent stick, strung as a bow is for arrow shooting. In playing, it passes between the strings. Sometimes there are four strings, but the most popular instrument has only two, and is almost devoid of resonance. The wonder to us is how a people so ingenious should have left their most popularly used instruments without improvement in any direction. It is true that some little attempt at decoration is made, but there is no lavishing of skill, no lifting of the commonplace to the region of art. [Illustration: _Chinese Violin._ _Fig. 40._] Very different, however, is the treatment of another class of instrument, represented by the _Ch’in_ and the _Sê_. These are “many-stringed” and may be called oblong in shape, and many specimens are really beautiful in ornamentation. The art worker with illimitable patience, bestows upon them the resources of industrial skill and the loving care of artistic designing in many coloured woods, and ivories and lac, and metal. Perhaps because these instruments are used in temples and palaces, and in the abodes of the great ones of the nation. The art of playing upon them is only acquired after the devotion of much time in learning “systems” overloaded with complicated directions, many of them associated with allegorical meanings, inattention to which would make the music of none effect, the “system” being as onerous as state etiquette.