Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 1.djvu/441

after so many long years of prosperous achievement—sufficient to have crystallised into a natural endowment the transmitted skill of fifty generations—a brief withdrawal of Court patronage had power to paralyse art. During the years that intervened between the fall of the Ming dynasty (1644) and the accession of the Emperor Kang-hsi (1661), the outcome of the best factories scarcely deserve to be called mediocre; and again, although the reigns of that sovereign and his two successors are memorable as a period of renaissance culminating in hitherto unparalled perfection, the illiberal policy of subsequent Emperors was the signal for an almost immediate loss of everything but tradition. Since the beginning of the present century, China has produced little that deserves to be classed with the works of her old masters. No longer are found the depth and softness of paste, rich velvety lustre of glaze and brilliancy of enamels that distinguished, as they are infallible evidences of, her keramic efforts prior to 1800; while in paintings, bronzes, and lacquer, the same marked inferiority is manifest.