The Hall of Classics
Tim ED among those who visit the parklike grounds of the Hall of Classics realize that they are standing within the precincts of the oldest educational institution in the world. Yet this is a fact. While the present site, with its fine buildings, its impressive memorial arches, and its hundreds of stone tablets, can boast of no great antiquity, yet this historic university, as a national institution of learning, points TITTITUOTTITANIOTIT back with pride not merely to hundreds, but to thousands of years of uninterrupted prosperity. "As an Imperial institution having a fixed organization and definite objects," says Dr. W. A. P. Martin, "it carries its history, or at least its pedigree, back to a period far anterior to the founding of the Great Dall. Among the regulations of the House of Chou, which flourished a thousand years before the Christian era, we meet it already in full-blown vigor, and under the identical name which it now bears, that of the Kuo Tzu Chien, or 'School for the Sons of the Empire.' It was in its glory before the light of science dawned on Greece, and when Pythagorus and Plato were pumping their secrets from the priests of the Heliopolis." The present site of the Kuo Tzu Chien, near the north wall of the Tartar City, was probably chosen by the Mongol emperors (A, D, 1200-1368), and under them many of the buildings were erected. The present Hall of Classics, shown in the accompanying plate, is a comparatively modern structure, having been erected by the emperor Chien Lung (A.D. 1736-1798) after the ancient model. Standing foursquare, amid groves of venerable cedars, this lofty shrine with its spacious verandas and delicate tracery, surmounted by the pide-spreading, double-eaved roof of Imperial yellow tile and capped by a gilded ball, is conceded by many to be the finest example of Chinese architecture in existence. Added beauty lies in the fact that the whole edifice stands in the midst of a circular pond. crossed by four marble bridges which lead up to the great doors. Around the pond is a beautifully carved balustrade of polished marble. Within this temple of leaming, seated upon a richly carved throne with a famous screen representing the five sacred mountains of China behind him, the "Son of Heaven" met with the graduates and literati of Peking each year, and expounded the classics. Along both sides of the court, beneath spacious porticoes, can be seen the one hundred seventy marble columns on which the authorized texts of the thirteen canonical books (or classics) are engraved. The surrounding courts are studded with row upon row of stone pillars- more than three hundred in all-containing the names of those who have won the third or highest degree. "This granite register goes back for six centuries and contains a complete list of all those who, since the founding of the University, have attained to the dignity of the doctorate."
