the empire. Flowers, both natural and artificial, are largely used as ornaments to the head, and richly chased and jewelled hairpins are added to give taste to the coiffure. These last are often of considerable value, and are commonly presents either from parents or husbands. They not unfrequently form the principal part of the property belonging to the owners, and in cases of emergency they are the first things resorted to for the purpose of raising money. They are sometimes given also by their fair owners to friends as tokens of regard, and in many plays and novels their disappearance from the heads of wives is made to arouse the same suspicions in the minds of the ladies' husbands as the loss of Desdemona's handkerchief did in the poisoned brain of Othello. The striking feature, however, in the women's appearance and gait is their misshapen feet. In most lands the desire is to give freedom to movement, but an absurd fashion, backed by the weight of centuries, has crippled and disabled countless generations of the women in China. No sufficient explanation has ever been given of the origin of this very unnatural custom, which is all the more objectionable as Chinawomen, speaking generally, are gifted with finely shaped hands and feet. The saying of a French lady that one must suffer to be beautiful is certainly true— accepting the Chinese estimate of the fashion-in the case of the poor ladies of China. The size and shape of the foot which fashion requires are only to be attained by a dislocation which causes great pain in the first instance, and often permanent suffering. At an early age, generally when the child is about four or five, the process begins by the feet being

bound tightly round in the required shape. The four smaller toes are bent under the foot, the big toe is sometimes brought backwards on the top of the foot, and the instep is forced upwards and backwards. In this way the foot is clubbed and is forced into a shoe from about three to four inches long. The little victims of this cruel fashion unquestionably suffer great pain in the early stages, but as a rule the skin, which at first is dreadfully abrased, becomes gradually hardened, and as those whose feet are squeezed into shoes of the size mentioned are ladies who are not required to move about much, their feet probably answer all the purposes expected of them. This is not saying much. A lady scarcely walks at all. If she goes out she is either carried in a sedan-chair, or, in the north of the country, in a carriage. Within doors she either hobbles about, leaning on a stick or on the shoulder of a waiting-maid, or is carried on the back of a servant. It is obvious that this extreme compression would render women of the poorer classes quite unfitted to fulfil their necessary avocations, and with them therefore the feet are allowed greater scope. The custom is entirely confined to the Chinese; the Manchu conquerors having never submitted their own women to the torture and discomfort of the practice, neither, also, have the boat populations thought it necessary to deform themselves for the sake of fashion. It is even said that in the neighbourhood of Ning-po a movement is on foot among the Christian population to abolish this fetish of fashion, but it is doubtful whether its promotion by converts from the national religion will do much to advance even so rational an object.

In their desire to make beautiful what is naturally so ugly, the women delight to adorn the shoes with rich and bright embroidery; and fortunately for them the swaying gait which the fashion compels them to assume in walking has come to be regarded as a winsome beauty. Poets are never tired of describing in verse the leaf-shaped eyebrows, the willow waists, and the swaying movements of Chinese ladies, which they liken to boughs gently waving in the wind.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GARDENS AND TRAVEL.

It is well that it is possible to find something to say in favour of the cruel custom of crippling the feet of the women, and cynically minded Chinamen add to their approval of the grace which it imparts to the step, their appreciation of the fact that it prevents ladies from gadding about. This it certainly does, and even the exercise which they are tempted to take in their gardens is confined to very limited excursions. The love of flowers seems to be inherent in the people of the extreme East, and their gardens are to both the men and women of China a never-failing delight. With much taste they lay out the ground and dispose the flowers to the best possible advantage. As landscape gardeners they are unsurpassed, and succeed by skilful arrangement in giving an impression of extent and beauty to even paltry and naturally uninteresting pieces of ground. By clever groupings of rock-work, by raising artificial hills, and by throwing high bridges over ponds and streams, they produce a panorama which is full of fresh points of view and of constant surprises. As De Guignes wrote, in describing Chinese gardens,

the object of the owner is to imitate "the beauties and to produce the inequalities of nature. Instead

of alleys planted symmetrically or uniform grounds, there are winding footpaths, trees here and there as if by chance, woody or sterile hillocks, and deep gullies with narrow passages, whose sides are steep or rough with rocks, and presenting only a few miserable shrubs. They like to bring together in gardening, in the same view, cultivated grounds and arid plains; to make the field uneven and cover it with artificial rock-work; to dig caverns in mountains, on whose tops are arbours half overthrown and around which tortuous footpaths run and return into themselves, prolonging, as it were, the extent of the grounds and increasing the pleasure of the walk." In the more purely floral parterres, the plants are arranged so as to secure brilliancy of bloom with harmony of colour. Over the greater part of China the land is favoured with so fertile a soil and so congenial a climate that flowers grow and blossom with, prodigal profusion. Roses, hydrangeas, peonies, azaleas, and a host of other plants beautify the ground, while creepers of every hue and clinging growth hang from the boughs of the trees and from the eaves of the summer-houses and pavilions which are scattered over the grounds. With the instinctive love of flowers which belongs to Chinamen, the appearance of the blooms on the more conspicuous flowering shrubs is eagerly watched for. Floral calendars are found in every house above the poorest, and expeditions are constantly made into the country districts to enjoy the sight of the first bursting into blossom of favourite flowers. The presence of