Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/316

 their chess boards and play, and the leaders of the village talk over the communal affairs. If there is any gossip going, you will be sure to hear it at this point. Not uncommonly the village shrine is the place of general rendezvous.

Without doubt the city walls are the most imposing structures in Korea. The enormous work represented by the wall which surrounds Seoul is at once apparent, and is very impressive. As you pass through the country you will frequently see the top of some rocky hill crowned with a genuine acropolis. It is a heavy stone wall twelve or fifteen feet high and a mile or more around. Within you will find no evidences of life nor of recent occupation. Long centuries ago the usefulness of these places of refuge passed away, and they remain, like the feudal castles of Europe, mere monuments of past events. They never were places of permanent residence, but were used, like the block-houses in western America, when there was danger of an Indian raid.

A word is in place regarding architectural decorations. These do not consist, as in the West, in variations of general style. The Koreans adhere strictly to one plan, and their forms of ornamentation are wholly superficial. Only government buildings can be painted. A private citizen would be arrested and punished severely if he presumed to paint his house. It would imply an assumption of royal privilege. The same would happen if he should leave the posts of his house round instead of squaring them. This also is a royal prerogative.

It is not easy to describe the paint on a Korean palace. If the reader will imagine that a rainbow has been dashed against the house and that fragments of it have adhered to every exposed piece of wood he will gain a faint idea of how it looks. The colours are the primitive hues of the rainbow, and they are applied in little curved rainbow patterns, so that any painted surface looks like a conglomerate of kaleidoscopic fragments. It tires the imagination to fancy how the painter could do the same thing twice, but we find that he can do nothing else.