gifts. 1 In numbers these homes of the dead far surpass those of the living. They are the monumental architecture of a people whose delight in perpetuating the relations of this life has absorbed the very earth on which they tread; and the land may almost be called a necropolis, decked with natural flowers and shaded with familiar trees. 2
But the symbolic Tablet brings closer intimacy with Family re- the unseen than the grave. The ancestral temple tTeTncJ" * s the centre of family reunion, without distinction trai temple. o f rank or wealth. Before its plain tablets of wood the cheerful tribes hold their domestic jubilees, sources of as pure and happy associations to young and old as the national life affords. Here are none of those fanatical rites which have so often defaced the service of the dead; every thing is as orderly as the household itself, and as promotive of kindly feeling. Here " worship," if we call it so, consecrates at least the happiness of homes, the purity of marriages, the traditions of duty and love.
From oldest times, the Ancestral Shrine has held the its impor- first place in Chinese affection. The first step in cTtoe' erecting princedoms, palaces, or mansions was to history lay its foundations, and to dedicate it with rites of ThVsh'i- ld n madic origin. The Shi-king describes the kin s- music and dances and pleasant viands in these " dwellings of the Expected Ones " 3 three thousand years ago; the sense of invisible presence and participation; the blessings invoked and received; the songs celebrating the first husbandmen and openers up of the fruitful lands; the little child personating a chief ancestor to receive gifts and honors, and the listening even to 'his prattle as a mystic wisdom. 4 No grief was suffered to intrude; nor could these rites be held during periods of mourning.
1 De Mas, p. 257: Doolittle, II. pp. 49, 50. 2 Fortune, p. 333. 8 Tswig-miao is the Chinese term. See Plath, p. 885. 4 Shi-king; II. vi. 6; III. ii. 3; Shu-king, II. 4, 9. Since Chi-hwang-ti, the tablet has supplanted these primitive symbols.
