t is a venerable and beautiful rite which commands the Chinese not only to establish in their dwellings a Hall of Ancestors, devoted to memorials of kindred who are dead, but which obliges them, on a certain day of every year, to quit the ordinary toils of life and hasten to the tombs of their Forefathers, where, with mingled services of festivity and worship, they pass the hours in honoring the manes of those whom they have either loved or been taught to respect for their virtues.