supposed to reside in their tablets, and hence annually, at the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, sheep and oxen fall in sacrifice in front of this honoured shrine of literature.
Close to the Confucian Temple stands the Kwo-tze-keen, or National University; and there, ranged around the Pi-yung-kung, or Hall of the Classics, are 200 tablets of stone inscribed with the complete text of the nine sacred books.
The Observatory has been set up on the wall on the eastern side of the Tartar city. Here, in addition to the colossal astro- nomical instruments erected by the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, we find two other instruments in a court below, which the Chinese made for themselves towards the close of the thirteenth century, when the Yuen dynasty was on the throne. Possibly some elements of European science may have been brought to bear on the construction of even these instru- ments, although the characters and divisions engraved on their splendid bronze circles point only to the Chinese method of dividing the year, and to the state of Chinese astronomy at the time. Yet Marco Polo must have been in the north of China at about the period of their manufacture, or at any rate John de Carvino was there, for he, under Pope Clement V., became bishop of Cambalu (Peking) about 1290 A. D., and perhaps, with his numerous staff of priests, he introduced some knowledge of Western art. The late Mr. Wylie (than whom there was probably no better authority) was with me when I examined these instru- ments, and was of opinion that they are Chinese, and that they were produced by Ko-show-king, one of the most famous astron- omers of China. One of them is an astrolaba, furnished beneath with a splendid sun-dial, which has long since lost its gnomon. The whole, indeed, consists of three astrolabae, one partly move- able and partly fixed in the plane of the ecliptic; the second
