copy cannot claim to date from 981, but it does date from
1566.

Another work of the same kind was the _San Ts'ai T'u Hui_, issued in
1609, which is bound up in seventeen thick volumes. It is especially
interesting for the variety of topics on which information is given, and
also because it is profusely illustrated with full-page woodcuts. It has
chapters on Geography, with maps; on Ethnology, Language, the Arts and
Sciences, and even on various forms of Athletics, including the feats of
rope-dancers and acrobats, sword-play, boxing, wrestling, and foot-ball.

Under Tricks and Magic we see a man swallowing a sword, or walking
through fire, while hard by an acrobat is bending backward and drinking
from cups arranged upon the ground.

The chapters on Drawing are exceptionally good; they contain some
specimen landscapes of almost faultless perspective, and also clever
examples of free-hand drawing. Portrait-painting is dealt with, and ten
illustrations are given of the ten angles at which a face may be drawn.
The first shows one-tenth of the face from the right side, the second
two-tenths, and so on, waxing to full-face five-tenths; then waning sets
in on the left side, four, three, and two-tenths, until ten-tenths shows
nothing more than the back of the sitter's head.

There is a well-known Chinese story which tells how a very stingy man
took a paltry sum of money to an artist--payment is always exacted in
advance--and asked him to paint his portrait. The artist at once complied
with his request, but in an hour or so, when the portrait was finished,
nothing was visible save the back of the sitter's head. "What does this
mean?" cried the latter, indignantly. "Oh," replied the artist, "I
thought a man who paid so little as you wouldn't care to show his face!"

* * * * *

Perhaps some one may wonder how it is possible to arrange an
encyclopaedia for reference when the language in which it is written
happens to possess no alphabet.

Arrangement under Categories is the favourite method, and it is employed
in the following way:--

A number of such words as Heaven, Earth, Time, Man, Plants, Beasts,
Birds, Fishes, Minerals, and others are chosen, and the subjects are
grouped under these headings. Thus, Eclipses would come under Heaven,
Geomancy under Earth, the Passions under Man, though all classification
is not quite so simple as these specimens, and search is often prolonged
by failing t