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closed because of the war.  Now for three days itis reopened, and the admission is halved.

Admission may be had only between eleven and two, so we went early.  The central part had been opened for the day.  Here were rare gardens, reception halls, and numerous exhibitions of paintings, bronzes, ceramics, jades, seals, ink and ink-stones, lacquer, cloissone, and enamels.  Here were shrines and throne rooms.  Here were rooms once used for studies, with pseudo western furniture in them, arranged with singularly bad taste, or rather with the taste of a former generation.  Here in one room were the chrysanthemums, dead on their stalks, that had graced the room last year, and the skeletons of goldfish, left to dry up in their bowl.  A pillow still bore the impress of a head.  Nothing had been disturbed, and everywhere was the trace of life hastily removed.  Everywhere was the confusion resulting from the hurried exodus and the hasty rummaging of the servants through boxes and drawers.

To describe the palace in detail is to go beyond the limits of my time, general impressions are alone allowable.  the gardens betrayed the perfection that make a good Chinese garden one of the most delightful spots in the world.  The buildings all showed the careful planning^[[/]]with which the whole mammoth city had been constructed, and the deterioration that came upon this home of emperors under a dieing dynasty [[strikethrough]] n [[/strikethrough]] and a poverty-stricken republic.  there were traces of the dragon sons of heaven that had lived here, and marks of children who had played happily and innocently in the sunshine of their official positions.

The paintings exhibited were of good quality, and included many of the Sung and Yuan dynasties, with some fine Mings too.  Castiglione's "Hundred Horses" was spread out on^[[/]]a table and causing much comment.  there were Ch'iu Yings, Wen Chen-mings, and numerous others, thrillingly beautiful, for the most part.  Both bronzes and paintings I should like to study more at leisure, when it is not so cold and the crowds not so thick.

We were glad to go to bed fairly early and make up a little sleep.