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CHINESE ORNAMENT.
In their ornamentation, with which the world is so familiar through the numerous
manufactured
articles of every kind which have been imported into this country, they do
not appear to have gone
beyond that point which is reached by every people in an early stage of civilisation:
their art, such
as it is, is fixed, and is subject neither to progression nor retrogression.
 In the conception of pure
form they are even behind the New Zealander; but they possess, in common
with all Eastern nations,
the happy instinct of harmonising colours. As this is more a faculty than
an acquirement, it is just
what we should expect; the arriving at an appreciation of pure form is a
more subtle process, and is
the result of either more highly endowed natural instincts, or of the development
of primitive ideas
by successive generations of artists improving on each other's efforts.
The general forms of many of the Chinese porcelain vases are remarkable for
the beauty of their
outline, but not more so than the rude water-bottles of porous clay which
the untutored Arabian
potter fashions daily OD the banks of the Nile, assisted only by the instincts
of his gentle race; and
the pure form of the Chinese vases is often destroyed by the addition of
grotesque or other unmeaning
ornaments, built up upon the surface, not growing from it: from which we
argue, that they can
possess an appreciation of form, but in a minor degree.
In their decoration, both painted and woven, the Chinese exhibit only just
so much art as would
belong  to a primitive  people.   Their most successful efforts are those
in   which  geometrical
combinations form the basis; but even in these, whenever they depart from
patterns formed by the
intersection of equal lines they appear to have a very imperfect idea of
the distribution of spaces.
Their instinct of colour enables them, in some measure, to balance form,
but when deprived of this
aid they do not appear to be equally successful. The diapers on Plate LXIX.
will furnish us with
examples. Patterns 1, 8, 13, 18, 19, being generated by figures which ensure
an equal distribution,
are more perfect than Nos. 2, 4-7, 41, where the arrangement depends more
upon caprice; on the
other hand, Nos. 28, 33, 35, 49, and the other patterns of this class on
the Plate, are examples in
which the instinct of the amount of balancing colour required would determine
the mass.      The
Chinese share with the Indian this happy power in their woven fabrics; and
the tone of the ground
of any fabric is always in harmony with the quantity of ornament which it
has to support. The
Chinese are certainly colourists, and are able to balance with equal success
both the fullest tones of
colour and the most delicate shades.
They are not only successful in the use of the primaries, but also of the
secondaries and tertiaries;
most successful, perhaps, of all in the management of the lighter tones of
pure colours,-pale blue,
pale pink, pale green, prevailing.
Of purely ornamental or conventional forms, other than geometric patterns,
the Chinese possess
but very few. On Plate LX. are some examples in 1-3, 5, 7, 8. They have no
flowing conventional
ornament-such as we find in all other styles; the place of this is always
supplied by a representation
of natural flowers interwoven with lineal ornament: such as Nos. 17, 18,
Plate LXI.; or of fruit,
see Plate LXII.   In all cases, however, their instinct restrains them  within
the true limit ; and
although the arrangement is generally unnatural and unartistic, they never,
by shades and shadows,
as with us, violate consistency. In their printed paper-hangings, the whole
treatment, both of figures,
landscape and ornament, is so far conventional, that however we may feel
it to be unartistic, we are
not shocked by an overstepping of the legitimate bounds of decoration.  
 In their floral patterns,
moreover, they always observe the natural laws of radiation from the parent
stem, and tangential
curvature: it could not well be otherwise, as the peculiarity of the Chinese
is their fidelity in copying;
and we hence infer that they must be close observers of nature. It is the
taste to idealise upon this
close observation which is wanting.
We have already referred in the Greek chapter to the peculiarities of the
Chinese fretwork. No. 1,
86