Our First Excursion Was To The Celebrated Temple Of Honan, Which Is Said To Be One Of The Finest In China.

This temple is surrounded by numerous out-buildings, and a large garden enclosed with a high wall.

You first enter a large fore- court, at the extremity of which a colossal gateway leads into the inner courts. Under the archway of this portico are two War Gods, each eighteen feet high, in menacing attitudes, and with horribly distorted features. They are placed there to prevent evil spirits from entering. A second similar portico, under which are the four Celestial Kings, leads into the inmost court, where the principal temple is situated. The interior of the temple is 100 feet in length, and 100 feet in breadth. The flat roof, from which hang a number of glass chandeliers, lamps, artificial flowers, and silk ribbons, is supported upon several rows of wooden pillars, while the multitude of statues, altars, flower-pots, censers, candelabra, candlesticks, and other ornaments, involuntarily suggest to the mind of the spectator the decoration of a Roman Catholic church.

In the foreground are three altars, and behind these three statues, representing the God Buddha in three different aspects: the past, the present, and the future. These figures, which are in a sitting posture, are of colossal dimensions.

We happened to visit the temple just as service was being performed. It was a kind of mass for the dead, which a mandarin had ordered for his deceased wife. At the right and left altars were the priests, whose garments and gesticulations also resembled those of the Roman Catholics.

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