residences on the hill, there is a crescent-shaped stone shrine of imposing proportions, designed to correct the Feng-shui, which has been seriously disturbed by the construction of an arsenal after a foreign type.
This arsenal, like all the others on Chinese soil, was raised simply because the authorities deemed it expedient to remodel their military equipments with all possible speed, and then Feng-shui, or the Geomantic luck of the locality, was treated with but scant consideration. Feng-shui, indeed, had to yield to the stern necessity of the times, and was relegated to this very humble station on the hill-side. By steps like this the fanatic dread of the common people will readily be overcome ; for they account their scholarly mandarins much better judges of Feng-shui and its influences than they themselves can pretend to be. But let us visit the Chinese foreign arsenal. The first building we enter when we land, reminds us, by its lofty roof and general appearance, of a plain English railway-station. It is constructed of brick on a solid granite foundation, and is enclosed by a wall, which is also of granite and which rises about five feet above the floor. Passing in through a spacious doorway we make our way along an iron avenue, lined on both sides with smiths ' forges, whose blast is supplied by steam. The engine which ministers to these forges has a driving-wheel of colossal proportions, and may also be seen quickening a row of steam-hammers, with forces mighty enough to forge a shaft for the biggest steamer afloat, or so delicate as to straighten a pin. Strange as it may appear, these giant tools when first seen working, produced but little impression on their Chinese spectators. The next workshop we visit is as spacious as the preceding one, and contains the half-formed skeleton of a mammoth engine for rolling out sheet-iron and steel armour-
