China and the West

Shebbeare, John. Letters on the English Nation [ID D26903].
Letter LVI.
The simple and sublime have lost all influence almost every where, all is Chinese or Gothic ; every chair in an apartment, the frames of glasses, and tables, must be Chinese : the walls covered with Chinese paper fill'd with figures which resemble nothing of God's creation, and which a prudent nation would prohibit for the sage of pregnant women.
In one chamber, all the pagods and distorted animals of the east are piled up, and called the beautiful decorations of a chimney-piece ; on the sides of the room, lions made of porcelain, grinning and misshapen, are placed on brackets of the Chinese taste, in arbors of flowers made in the same ware, and leaves of brass painted green, lying like lovers in the shades of old Arcadia.
Nay, so excessive is the love of Chinese architecture become, that at present the foxhunters would be sorry to break a leg in pursuing their sport in leaping any gate that was not made in the eastern taste of little bits of wood standing in all directions ; the connoisseurs of the table delicacies can distinguish between the taste of an ox which eats his hay from a Chinese crib, a hog that is inclosed in a stye of that kind, or a fowl fattened in a coop the fabric of which is in that design, and find great difference in the flavour.
The Gothic too has its advocates ; you see a hundred houses built with porches in that taste, such as are belonging to many chapels ; even door-cases and the fronts of some dwellings, which might be drawn by one horse like a chaise, are fitted up in this manner ; not to mention that rooms are stuccoed in this taste, with all the minute unmeaning carvings, which are found in the most Gothic chapels of a thousand years standing.
Such is the present prevailing taste in this city.
But perhaps, whilst I am blaming this in the people of England, the same thing may have prevailed at Rome, at least I am afraid of it, if a sample of your whole present taste may be taken, from the fingers, which you furnish to this city.
To my unpolite ears, the airs which are sung at present have no longer the imitation of any thing which would express passion or sentiment, and the whole merit lyes in the Gothic and Chinese closes and cantabiles, frithered into niceties and divisions, which, like minute carvings, are the certain characteristics of a little taste, that delights more in difficulties than truth, that would rather see a posture-master in all bodily distortion, than the graceful attitudes of Dupré on the French theatre of the opera at Paris, in the most exalted manner of dancing.
The Chinese taste is so very prevalent in this city at present, that even pantomime has obliged harlequin to seek shelter in an entertainment, where the scenes and characters are all in the taste of that nation.
There is one part of Chinese manners however, which is not yet put in practice in England ; the little shoes which are contrived to cramp the feet, and confine the ladies to their houses, do not yet prevail ; and I believe that Husbands have not power enough over their wives, to preach them into that fashion, which would oblige them to be mere domestic animals.
In truth, this tase for littlenesses is advancing a great pace, in all the parts of the national entertainments ; their theatrical pieces in tragedy and comedy, have infinitely more variety of stage trick than character, and ten new scenes for one passage of good writing ; in fact it is the eye which is written to, and not the understanding ; racks, wheels, and other instruments of death, together with a few kicks and struggles at the moment of dying, like a cock turkey beating his wings when his neck is twisted, make up too much of the moving parts of an English modern tragedy.