. An authentic account of an embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China : including cursory observations made, and information obtained in travelling through that ancient empire, and a small part of Chinese Tartary ; together with a relation of the voyage undertaken on the occasion of His Majesty's ship the Lion, and the ship Hindostan, in the East India company's service, to the Yellow Sea and Gulf of Pekin, as well as of their return to Europe ; taken chiefly from the papers of His Excellency the Earl of Macartney, Sir Erasmus Gower, and of other gentlemen in the several
. An authentic account of an embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China : including cursory observations made, and information obtained in travelling through that ancient empire, and a small part of Chinese Tartary ; together with a relation of the voyage undertaken on the occasion of His Majesty's ship the Lion, and the ship Hindostan, in the East India company's service, to the Yellow Sea and Gulf of Pekin, as well as of their return to Europe ; taken chiefly from the papers of His Excellency the Earl of Macartney, Sir Erasmus Gower, and of other gentlemen in the several departments of the embassy . tions are sometimes distorted, and un- natural. The human figure is often out of due propor- tion. Their aversion to anatomy might partly be the cause. They do not succeed better in the representa- tion of a lion. There are two large bronze figures of that animal on two marble pedestals before one of the gateways leading to the hall of audience at Yuen-min- yuen. The metal had been cast in small pieces, which EMBASSY TO CHINA. are fitted together in a very ingenious manner, tho there are at least a hundred different pieces in each figure; but so totally unlike are they to what they were intended to represent, as appears by the annexed engraving of one of them, that they might almost be mistaken for knights in armour, with periwigs such as were worn in the time of King Charles. The lion, however, may be considered as a creatureof the imagination among the Chinese. It is not bred inthe country. It has not been brought amongst them,either as a present to the sovereign, or as an object of. 312 EMBASSY TO CHINA. Pekin. curiosity to be shewn for profit. Those statues were pro- ~~^~ bably bad imitations of bad drawings of the lion, whose real superiority of strength and imputed generosity of disposition, have brought him into notice farther than he has travelled. The larger and mightier animal, the elephant, is to befound, as an appendage of greatness, in
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