The Rev. Joseph Edkins was, I believe, the first to draw attention to the symbolical architecture of the Temple of Hea- ven, and to the importance which the Chinese themselves attach to the southern open altar, as the most sacred of all Chinese religious structures. There, at the winter solstice, the Emperor himself makes burnt-offerings, just as the patriarchs did of old, to the supreme Lord of Heaven. In the city of Foochow, on the southern side of the walled enclosure, are two hills, one known as Wu-shih-shan, and the other as Kui-shen-shan, or the ^'Hill of the Nine Genii." On the top of the former there is an open altar — a simple erection of rude unhewn stone, ap- proached first by a flight of eighteen steps, and finally by three steps, cut into the face of the rock. This altar is reputed to be very ancient, and to it the Governor-General of the province repairs at certain seasons of the year as the representative of the Emperor, and there offers up burnt-sacrifices to heaven. In this granite table, covered with a simple square stone vessel filled with ashes, we have the sacrificial altar in what is probably its most ancient Chinese form. The southern altar at Peking bears a wonderful resemblance to Mount Meru, the centre of the Buddhist universe, round which all the heavenly bodies are supposed to move ; and there we find tablets of sun, moon and stars arranged around the second terrace of the altar, according to the Chinese system of astronomy.
The city of Peking, or rather the Tartar portion of it, is laid out with an almost perfect symmetry. The sacred purple city stands nearly in the centre, and there are three main streets, which run from north to south. One of these streets leads direct to the palace-gates, and the other two are nearly equi- distant from it on either side ; while myriads of minor thorough- fares and lanes intersect one another in the spaces between.
