Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. IV.pdf/47



THE broad paved approach to the Hall of Confucius is shaded with avenues of venerable cypress trees, and forms one of the most imposing scenes in Peking. Having ascended a double flight of white marble steps, divided into two by a sloping marble slab, upon which the imperial dragon stands in high relief, you reach a broad marble terrace in front of the hall. Within, the lofty roof is supported by solid teak pillars fifty feet in height, and the tablet of the great sage faces you as you enter the hall. In front of this tablet there is a simple altar surmounted by a bronze censer, and flanked by bronze candelabra. The tablet itself consists of the plain strip of wood, which is shown in the centre of No. 36, and is inscribed with these words in Manchu and Ciiinese, " The soul of the most holy ancestral teacher Confucius." There are also the tablets of his four chief disciples ranged on each side of his own. The inscription above is in large letters of gold, and runs thus, " The teacher and example of ten thousand generations." This hall contains in less prominent positions the tablets of twenty-two other followers of Confucius as well.

Sacrifices are offered at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes in honour of the tablet of the great sage; oxen and sheep are then slain, and the carcases stripped of their skins are placed upon stands in front of hts tablet. It is the spirit of the sage supposed to reside in the tablet that is thus honoured.

There is a temple devoted to the worship of Confucius in every Chinese city. One of these halls, the finest I have seen, was at Foochow; but they are to be met with, indeed, over the length and breadth of the land, each adorned with tablets inscribed with the names of the sage and his most distinguished disciples.

LE-SHEN-LAN is professor of mathematics in the Imperial College, Peking, and is now about sixty years of age. In his youth he studied thoroughly the native mathematics, reading the Jesuit translations, and the works of native authors as well. More than twenty years ago he visited Shanghai, and there made the acquaintance of the English missionaries. He remained for many years, translating works on mathematics and natural philosophy. Had it not been for the valuable aid afforded by Englishmen connected with the various Protestant missions, China could not have boasted such a mathematician as Le-shen-lan. a man who has reaped the advantage of Wylie's translation of Euclid's Elements, or rather his completion of the work which Ricci had begun when he translated the first six books about two centuries before; of the Tae-soo-heo, a treatise on algebra; and of the Tae-we-tseih-shth-keTh, or the Elements of Analytical Geometry, Differential and Integral Calculus, and other similar works.