ustible garden.
Nor is it unequal to depicting the grander aspects of nature in her
mighty forests and on the shores of the ocean. A close familiarity with
its native literature can here alone follow its diction through a
ceaseless flow of phrase and figure, listen with understanding to the
hum of the bee as it hangs over the lotus, and contemplate with
S[=a]kuntal[=a]'s pious sympathy the creeper as it winds round the mango
tree. But the poetic beauty of the Indian drama reveals itself in the
mysterious charm of its outline, if not in its full glow, even to the
untrained; nor should the study of it--for which the materials seem
continually on the increase--be left aside by any lover of literature.

3. CHINESE DRAMA

Like the Indian drama, the Chinese arose from the union of the arts of
dance and song. To the ballets and pantomimes out of which it developed
itself, and which have continued to flourish by the side of its more
advanced forms, the Chinese ascribe a primitive antiquity of origin;
many of them originally had a symbolical reference to such subjects as
the harvest, and war and peace. A very ancient pantomime is said to have
symbolized the conquest of China by Wu-Wang; others were of a humbler,
and often of a very obscure, character. To their music the Chinese
likewise attribute a great antiquity of origin.

There are traditions which carry back the characters of the Chinese
drama to the 18th century before the Christian era. Others declare the
Emperor Wan-Te (fl. about A.D. 580) to have invented the drama; but this
honour is more usually given to the emperor Yuen-Tsung (A.D. 720), who
is likewise remembered as a radical musical reformer. Pantomimes
henceforth fell into disrepute; and the history of the Chinese drama
from this date is divided, with an accuracy we cannot profess to
control, into four distinct periods. Each of these periods, we are told,
has a style, and each style a name of its own; but these names, such as
"Diversions of the Woods in Flower," have little or no meaning for us;
and it would therefore be useless to cite them.

The first period is that of the dramas composed under the T'ang dynasty,
from A.D. 720 to 907. These pieces, called _Tchhouen-Khi_, were limited
to the representation of extraordinary events, and were therefore, in
design at least, a species of heroic drama. The ensuing times of civil
war interrupted the "pleasures of peace and prosperity" (a Chinese
phrase for dramati