He was only six months old when we first knew him, with long silky ears, and a little head covered with delicate yellow down, undeveloped puppy body, but a grand white chest, and black muzzle; he had fine long moustachios and long black eyelashes, from between which looked out engaging lustrous eyes of a singularly intelligent expression. He weighed just about three pounds at his utmost; and when he stretched himself to his greatest length, he was only a hand and a half long. But his port and his attitudes were those of a lion, or, when engaged in worrying a piece of cord dangled invitingly before him, for all the world just like those of a Chinese monster, only in miniature. In some ways he was like a kitten rather than a puppy, so graceful and gentle in his movements, with long claws, too, at the tips of his little feathery feet, and a way of purring when he was pleased. He made many little plaintive sounds, as if he were talking to himself; and sometimes it almost seemed as if he were talking to other people too, so articulate were they. His tail was his weak point—it was too long. But some people said, that as he grew older it would curl up and look shorter. We do not know if this would have been so, nor whether his body might have developed into being too long or too thin, or something. In size he was like a puppy, and his head and chest were lovely. It was very difficult to avoid treading upon him, he was so small and noiseless in his movements. So he wore three little rattles round his throat, for he was too small to wear real Peking bells. And it was extraordinary the genius the little creature had for crying out before he was hurt, and as if he had been half killed too. But no one ever saw little Shing-erh—Little Apricot, as he was called, from his colour—put out, or angry about being hurt. He was always pleased, always full of life, ready to fall off fast asleep, or spring up wide awake, without a moment's notice, and never afraid of any person or thing.

When bought of a Chinaman in the streets of Peking, he showed no distrust, but nestled at once into European arms, went home in them, and growled when strangers approached his master's door, or sprang up delighted to welcome his master himself. He was carried about in a coat pocket, or sat in an office drawer, gravely watching the writing of manifests by the hour together; or at times trotted gaily through the streets, ever and anon stopping to sniff out some to him perfectly delicious bit of nastiness. Who so delighted as little Shing-erh, when he found out he could actually run up the stairs to the dining-room? And from that moment he was always fancying it luncheon-time or dinner-time; for there was no doubt of one thing—the little sleeve-dog did enjoy being fed. He enjoyed caresses also. If he would not come when he was called, there was always one way to secure his attention, and that was to pet Wong, our other dog, a Shantung pug, about five times Shing-erh's size. Then the little one would come at once. Poor Wong! He had been used to being called 'Little Wong,' and treated accordingly, and at first he growled, and even bit the new-comer. After that he looked heartbroken for a day or two, went home by himself when taken out walking, and resisted all the little one's efforts to draw him into a game of romps, till an idea struck him, and he began to jump on to sofas and armchairs; for did he not see the little one on them made much of? Once he even jumped right up into my lap, and tried to nestle there. And he tried to bite bits of cord, or our hands. But his teeth were very different from the tender milk-teeth of the little sleeve-dog, who could not bite any one if he tried. So these advances of his had to be summarily repelled. And gradually, though somewhat sadly, Wong reconciled himself to the situation; submitted to everyone's offering the little one crumbs of delicacy, while he sat up on his hind legs unnoticed, although chin-chinning beautifully with his two front paws; submitted when the little one bit his ears, or flew at his eyes, or pulled his tail, in order to attract his attention; and even condescended to be played with occasionally.

It was a great affair taking little Shing-erh out; for he found the world so full of interest, and would look round with intelligent eyes, wagging his tail, as much as to say, "All right! but look what a delightful place I find myself in." It was impossible to be angry with him, though it made progress through the streets very slow at times. Then when one took him up and carried him as a sort of punishment—for he did dearly love to run—he would look so grave and serious, one longed to see him frolicking once more. The only way was to walk very fast; then the four little feet would go galloping along, the tiny puppy bent on showing he could run as fast as other people. He was never afraid of any dog, but quite big dogs used to run away from him, he was so lionlike in his advances; and when he went to pay a visit to any other dog, he always first drove his host into a corner with his tail between his legs. Then only would the little one make up to him, and gradually they would have a game of romps together. But just because we were so fond of him he was a great anxiety; for any Chinaman could put him up his sleeve and run away with him quite easily. And every one took a fancy to him; though not every one, like two sweet little children, asked first if they might carry him, next if they might kiss puppy-dog, and finally if they might exchange a baby-sister of the same age for him.

One day, holding him up for a child to stroke, I noticed that the little one's breath, till then always so sweet, smelt a little. It had been very cold coming up-river in the winter weather, and it was still colder going on, damp and raw; and we hardly knew how to keep ourselves warm, much less the little puppy-dog. So it seemed hard to prevent him from lying close to the stove; but possibly it was that which made him ill. Or it may have been the little bones people gave him on the steamers. Every one used to ask deferentially, "May I give the little dog this? There is no meat on it." But there was a little meat sometimes, and all the while there was poor Wong begging unnoticed. But, then, Wong was very particular what he ate—he liked some things, disliked others; while as to little Shing-erh, we never found out what he did not like to eat whilst he was well. But now we noticed he no longer cared to play. He would take a run outside for a little while, he dearly loved to forage under the dinner-table, and pick up stray crumbs; otherwise he wanted always to be nursed, making little cooing sounds of satisfaction as he curled himself up on one's lap, his little feathery head and long ears showing off to great advantage as he did so. He was learning to sit up like Wong and beg too, and even did so sometimes without anything to lean his feeble puppy back against; and he had almost learnt to give a paw when asked. We used to talk of all we were going to teach him, believing firmly that nothing was beyond our puppy's capacity. We used to think how pleasant it would be when our new house was built and the garden laid out, and the little one could run freely about in it without anxiety as to his being stolen. But from the day we arrived up-country, it became increasingly evident that something was amiss with our tiny dog. He could not eat biscuit soaked in milk, his regular food whilst in Shanghai. He refused rice, unless fish were mixed with it. He showed himself ravenous for fish. Perhaps it would have been wiser to have been guided by the little creature's preferences. But bones and meat were always very attractive to him, and they could hardly have been the best food. He did not want to run after the first few days, sitting down upon his haunches, looking very serious when set down. How the country people admired him, when we carried him about, calling him, "Little sleeve-dog," "Cat-dog," "Little lion," and asking leave to stroke him, or stroking him without leave. "He comes from Peking," they would say; and they looked at him with pride and pleasure.

At last a day came when we despaired of his life. A Chinaman said, "Let me take him, and nurse him. I think I can cure him. You see, he is a Chinese dog, and you do not understand how to treat him. I can be with him all the while." So from our great love for him we let him go in his little quilted basket, with his quilted coverlet of gay patchwork, and little red pillow made expressly for himself, because he was so fond of making a pillow of an arm or a hand.

But in an hour or two he was brought back. He had thrown in his lot with Europeans, and the little Chinese dog would not eat from the hands of strange Chinamen, nor do anything they wished. His eyes were already glazed, and he seemed already half dead when he was brought back. So because all seemed over, and as if it did not matter what we did now, we held him quite close to the stove and poured port-wine down his throat. The little glazed eyes became limpid once more, and he looked up, content to be with us. Then I sat with him on my lap, thinking still of him as dead, and only waiting for the end. But the little dog rallied so, that that night, when taken upstairs, he struggled out of his basket on to the bed, where he had always loved best to sleep. He liked to lie there, with his little black-and-tan head looking so droll on the white pillow. Put down on the floor, for fear he should fall off—for, alas! his little legs gave way under him, and he tottered once as he tried to cross the bed—he actually ran about the room, till he found the water-jug, stood up on his hind legs, and deliberately dipped his pretty head into it and drank.

Perhaps that draught injured him, for the Chinese declared cold water must be fatal to him. Anyway, after that his rallying power appeared to have abandoned him. But even then he still used to look up and listen with great intensity when he heard his master's step upon the stair, recognising that to the very last. But though he lingered on all the next day and night, and on into the next morning, he was always growing weaker, till at last he could not swallow the spoonfuls we gave him every two hours. Once or twice he had fits of barking; but as he lay quite still and barked, we hoped he was quite happy, thinking he was fighting and vanquishing some other dog rather than suffering pain. Yet after such long drawn out dying it was a relief in the end when on the twelfth day up-country we saw the little thing lie quite still and stiff; though, as we looked at the graceful little head curled round with its two silky ears, our eyes filled with tears, and we felt almost as if we had lost a child.

The little dog had been of no use, and required much looking after; yet he had endeared himself to all who knew him. His dainty ways, his bright good humour, and intense pleasure in the society of his friends perhaps accounted for this. And yet our hearts smote us as, after the little one was taken from us, and we stooped to caress poor faithful Wong with a warmth to which of late he had been unaccustomed, the honest creature sprang on to the seat beside me with extraordinary effusiveness, and began leaping about and catching at our hands with the exuberance of long-repressed affection. Next night, though provided with a beautiful kennel full of straw downstairs, Wong slept out in the cold and rain in the courtyard outside our door, as he had been used to do in the old days. We tried to pet him, and make up for our loss by being additionally kind to all other dogs we saw. But when I see the pencil I once gave Shing-erh to gnaw, with all the marks of his little teeth, or his little rattles, the aching comes again to my heart, thinking of what might have been, and how if we had known better we might perhaps have preserved the life of the pretty pet, who so implicitly trusted and relied upon us.

As the intensest feelings ever become less intense if spoken about, so that in all ages the greatest danger has been for teachers of religious faith lest they should themselves cease to feel whilst infusing faith in others, so I have sought to take the edge off my grief by writing some account of little Shing-erh, aged twelve months when he died. Anyhow, whenever we leave China behind us, there will be a tenderer feeling in our hearts whilst thinking of the blue-gowned race, because of this little creature born and bred amongst Chinamen, and yet so engaging, so fastidious in all his ways, and so entirely without any fear.

Since then Wong is dead; and Jack, our faithful friend, and constant companion during nine years of travel, a beautiful long-haired terrier from Shantung, he too lies in a little grave, though his lustrous, intelligent eyes haunt me still. Let no one lightly enter on a Chinese dog as companion; they make themselves too much beloved, become too completely members of the family. Even Nigger, the black Chow dog that my husband kept before our marriage, and whose greeting he looked forward to all the long voyage out to China—even Nigger seems like a living personality to me, and I can hardly believe I never saw him. Beloved dogs, companions of a life too solitary, because amongst an uncompanionable race, Requiescant in pace! Good-bye, Shing-erh! good-bye, Jack! Others may, but I can never look upon your like again. There must be some subtle unnoticed quality in the Chinaman to breed such dogs; and the sweet little Szechuan ponies, miniature race-horses in form, and almost human in their intelligence, are fitting companions for the dogs, and doglike in their faithful, cheerful friendliness.

AFFAIRS OF STATE.

PRELUDE.

Part I.—Getting to Peking.

It was in 1888 we first arrived in Peking, and we felt at once convinced that, whatever wonders it might have to offer, nothing—no! nothing could surpass the wonder of the journey. And when it is considered that every high official throughout the empire had to travel this same way in order to be confirmed in each appointment, the wonder of it is enhanced. From Tientsin you could always ride to Peking, if you were strong enough. Sir Harry Parkes did it in the day, the year before he died. But if not equal to riding eighty miles at a stretch, or eighty miles relieved (?) by nights at Chinese inns, you had in 1888 to travel the way we did, taking boat up the Peiho as far as Tungchow.

We left Tientsin at two o'clock on Thursday, and reached Tungchow at 9 p.m. on Sunday, having been very lucky, as it appeared. We had a south-west wind all Friday, spinning us along certain reaches of the ever wriggling, rather than winding Peiho. Along the reverse reaches the men had to tow or pole us. On Saturday the wind was so high that we had to lie to in the middle of the day, the men being unable to make any way against it by towing. And we only made a very few miles that day. In the afternoon it rained, and was altogether cheerless. But on Sunday we had a fine westerly wind blowing us on. Although a river, the Peiho in this part of its course is decidedly more canal-like and uninteresting than the English canal down which I had had some thought of travelling the year before, till I decided it would be too tedious. But after all there is a charm about this exceedingly slow method of progression. The world does not really stand still with you, but you feel as if it did. You get interested in the boats you pass and meet; some coming down stream, laden with plants in pots—two dwarf orange-trees, with oranges on them, I saw once—or bringing down straw braid, or taking up brick tea—such quantities of brick tea, which had, I suppose, come all the way down the Yangtse from poor water-beleaguered Hankow of the willow avenues and ravening mosquitoes, and round farther by sea from Shanghai to Tientsin, and whose progress on strings and strings of dignified camels Siberiawards we subsequently saw. What brick tea costs in the original instance I do not know. But when I think of the labour expended on its transport I feel it ought to be precious indeed to the Siberians.

It is true that by the old method you could shut yourself into the boat cabin, and study colloquial Chinese according to Sir Thomas Wade, or write letters home to say how you were enjoying yourself, or drink tea, or smoke, just as your previous way of life disposed you to act, there being no restraining influence further than the size of the cabin. A native boat is not quite as luxurious as a Shanghai house-boat, though it is well enough, except in the matter of its being impossible to open the cabin door from the inside. So that when we were shut in, I always thought how, if the boat should heel over, we should be drowned inside like mice in a trap. Another exception must be made—not in favour of the cracks which grow portentously larger, as the boards shrink with the increasing dryness of the air, and which must let in an inordinate draught in winter, when the air is more cold than kindly. Even towards the end of September we found it hard enough to keep warm at night. We had two cabins, but one was pretty well all bedstead, being a raised ottoman sort of a place, under which boxes could be put, and on which mattresses were laid. We had to provide ourselves with everything we wanted, even to a cooking-stove. But then we paid only nine and a half dollars for our boat, including drink money. This at the then rate of exchange was under thirty shillings. The men fed themselves. So did we. It is tiresome that, travelling in China, nothing is to be bought by the way, beyond chickens and eggs, and sweet potatoes (delicious!) and cabbage (horrible!). It is tiresome, also, that the makers of tinned things do not put dates upon their tins; therefore in the outports—which Shanghai fine ladies always pronounce as if they were only peopled by "outcasts"—people have to put up with the tinned milk that somehow did not sell at Shanghai. It is a pity that the local representatives of the Army and Navy Stores do not see to this, and put dates on their tins. It would be well worth the "outcasts'" while to pay extra for recently tinned butter and milk, if they could rely upon the dates. As it was, our milk was very nearly butter, though it could not quite be used for that, and it certainly was not milk.

The Concession at Tientsin is either so far away from the Chinese town, or so satisfactory to its inhabitants, that they never stray away among the Chinese. On landing at the bridge of boats in the native city, while our servants made a few purchases, I found I excited as much interest as if there had not been a European colony within a thousand miles. It was, however, a particularly friendly crowd that accompanied me. A boy danced in front, clapping his hands, as if to bid the people in the street make way; another boy was very eager to point out all the sweet cakes he thought nicest; two old women and an old man went down on their knees to beg; an old man was washing very old shoes upon the bridge; another was selling odds and ends of old things, that looked as if they never had been new. There were sweet potatoes cooking; there were various other buyers and sellers, and crowds passing by, both on foot and in boats. Sometimes the bridge would be opened, sometimes closed to let the foot passengers go by. There was always a crowd; whichever way of progress was open, people were always progressing by it before it was ready for them. Nobody pushed, nobody was rude; every one appeared pleasant. But there, looking down the long straight reach of the river, was the tall tower of the ruined Roman Catholic Cathedral, recalling the massacre of 1870—a massacre that might so easily have embraced all the Europeans in the Concession, had not the rain mercifully come down in torrents and dispersed the mob. It did not seem possible, when we were there, to think of any danger of the kind threatening the exceptionally thriving-looking settlement.

I have not seen any Concession yet I liked the look of so well as that of Tientsin. There is a go-ahead look about the place, with all its goods stored in heaps on the Bund with only matting over them, instead of, as elsewhere, in warehouses; which makes it contrast especially with Chefoo, that sleeping beauty, whom no fairy prince has yet awakened. Perhaps, when he does, the merry wives of China, who used to resort there every summer, may find it hardly as charming as it was in its tranquillity and freedom from all restraint. But it was so tranquil, so absolutely uneventful, that our summer month there seemed only like a dream to look back upon. Its coast-line is beautiful; but it is a coast-line with nothing behind it, as it were—like the cat's smile in Alice in Wonderland, a grin and nothing more.

But it was at Tungchow in the old days that the tug of war in getting to Peking used to begin. You had bought all your stores, and furnished your boat, and spent days and nights in it; but all that was nothing to the great business of getting to Peking. There were thirteen miles yet to do, and the question was, How did you mean to try to get over them? My own firm conviction now is that the easiest way would have been to get up very early in the morning and walk. But as it was, I came into Peking in the traditional style, feet foremost in a springless cart, holding on hard to either side. We started at eleven in the morning from Tungchow, paused for an hour at a wayside inn to eat and rest, and did not reach Peking till six, only just before the gates were closed. At first starting I thought the accounts of the road had been exaggerated. It is true it was so dusty at intervals I was more reminded of a London fog than anything else. It is true I could not leave go with either hand without getting a tremendous bump on the head. But still I did not think the road was quite as bad as I had expected. Alas! the road was so bad we had not started by it at all, but were simply getting along by a way the carts had made for themselves. At Pa-li Chiao we came upon the real grand stone road, with the grand bridge made by the Ming Dynasty—when they moved their capital from Nanking to Peking, in order better to repel invading Tartar hordes—and never in the centuries since repaired by the Tartar horde of Manchus, who at once conquered them, when they thus obligingly put themselves within easy reach at the very extreme limit of their vast empire.

There was the road, with huge blocks of stone, some of them five feet long, and wide and thick in proportion, but sometimes worn away, sometimes clean gone. Now to hold on like grim death! How the smartly varnished little carts with their blue tops kept together at all I cannot imagine. But I know I immensely respected the mule that could pull us into and out of the holes and ruts, into which we dropped with a veritable concussion, not a jolt. Of course it was a new sensation—but a new sensation it can do no one any good to experience; and before I had had half an hour of it I had had enough, and asked for a donkey. However, the donkey brought was so tiny that, after a rest on its poor little thin back, I tried the cart again. The road did not seem quite so bad as before, until we got nearer the capital. Then—then I got out and walked. There was no help for it. And walking was decidedly less fatiguing. But an increasing crowd followed me. Every one spoke to me—I hope complimentarily. Men selling clothes waved them at me, and sang to invite purchase. It was hard work to avoid the carts, and donkeys, and mules, and camels, and men carrying things, and Manchu women with feet of the natural size, violently rouged faces, and hair made up into teapot handles, sticking out quite six inches behind their heads, or made into stiff wings, projecting about three inches on either side, and always with flowers stuck into their hair. It was hard work to avoid all these, and to keep up with the carts, and disagreeable to be choked and smothered in dust, and to feel oneself all the while appearing to every one as an escaped lunatic—ploughing through dust on one's own feet, instead of being driven along properly. But anything was better than jolting along that road till the great mock fortress came into view. We were about to enter the gates. The crowd there was too great to try to press through; so I climbed into the cart once more, and thus entered Peking comme il faut, in a springless cart.

It is the custom to say the road to Peking from Tungchow is desperately uninteresting. It may be so. I feel I ought hardly to hazard an opinion, for I was afraid to leave my eyeglasses dangling, and thus only once or twice managed both to get them out and up to my eyes sufficiently steadily to see through them; but to my shortsighted gaze there appeared to be a constant series of interesting graves and gateways and monsters, which I longed to examine more closely. Then the long procession of camels carrying brick tea northwards, or coming south empty to fetch it, did not become monotonous, even after I had seen some thousands or more of them. The men riding upon them had handkerchiefs tied in a very simple way, which, however, I at once saw was the original of the old homely English sun-bonnet. The men walking by their sides had conical oil-paper hats, which were equally evidently the original of the Nice hats of my youth. They had even red linings to them, such as I had so often worn myself in Europe, and three little spots of black, whose nature I could not quite make out, but which on my hats used to be represented by three little stars of black velvet. I had always thought a Nice hat looked Chinese, and, since I came to China, that it would be the very thing to wear in summer; and now here I found these camel-drivers wearing the old original model, which probably the Jesuits carried over long ago to North Italy.

The camels placed their springy hoofs softly on the hard, stony road. Those that wore bells carried their arched necks high. Their grave eyes looked down kindly on the clouds of dust. Between their two humps rode a man, as in a natural saddle. Their yellow necks shone in the slanting rays of the sun, while the great tufts of hair at the tops of their legs stood out darkly. I thought I should grow tired of them, but I had not even by the time we had reached the gate of Peking, at the end of our long day's travel of thirteen miles.

"Is this inside the city or outside the city?" I asked at last of my stout carter, when we seemed to have been travelling an interminable distance through roads rather like Clapham Common, if there were no grass upon it, and two rows of booths cutting it into three divisions—two of booths and one of road—so wide and uncared for and wildernesslike was this last. "Inside the city," answered he haughtily. I felt as if I had been very rude to ask, and longed to apologise, if I had hurt his feelings. But the road was so unlike a city street. It was like a large caravanserai, or like the encampment of a savage tribe. The shops that skirted the road had gaily gilded fronts, and every now and then a shopkeeper sent out men to scoop up the liquid filth at either side, and sprinkle it upon the dust by way of somewhat keeping it down. The smell resulting left nothing to be desired. Long before we reached Peking I had decided that the Chinese were a docile, peaceable nation of traders, overrun by a northern horde so incurably barbarous, that not even centuries of contact with the Chinese had been able to civilise them, though it might have made them so effeminate that they would soon become effete. I now began to wonder how long Peking could go on accumulating filth within its walls without breeding a Black Death or other awful pestilence.

We drove on and on. At last we turned down a very disreputable, dilapidated sort of mews; and there was the French Embassy to the right, very smart in fresh paint; the Japanese Embassy, very perky, with a European gateway; the German Embassy, dignified and fresh painted. Round the corner stood the English Embassy, with a massive but somewhat jail-like portal.

In the Middle Ages it often seems as if it must have been very pleasant for the lords and ladies. And in Peking it is very pleasant to live in a ducal palace. From the moment the Embassy servant stepped forward with a fly-flap, and courteously flapped the dust off our boots, everything was charming. We never wished to go outside again to face that vile mews, with its holes, its dust, its smells. We forgot all about it, as we looked at the stately perspective of the inner entrance of the Palace,—its ceilings richest blue and brilliant green, relieved by golden pomegranates and dragons; its mortised beams projecting, all highly painted, green, red—green, red. Not a sound penetrated within its sheltered courtyards. The wood-carvings were beautiful, the galleries long enough to satisfy all desire for walking. The Chinese decorations satisfied our eyes. At last—at last we had come upon something Oriental in China, æsthetic, eye-satisfying. At the same time we were surrounded by every English comfort, enjoying delightful English society! Why ever go outside the Embassy compound? Could Peking possibly have anything to show worth encountering such horrors as those of its entry, a survival from those Middle Ages so agreeable to read about, so disagreeable to live in?

But one evening we took the one Peking walk, along the summit of the walls. There was something pathetic, as well as ludicrous, in thinking of European attachés and their wives, European diplomatists and their families, having for a pleasure-walk the walls of Peking. The horrors of the approach to them can only be realised by those who know what the entourage of the walls of a Chinese city is generally like. They cannot be described in a book, that may lie on an English drawing-room table. Arrived at the top, you find a wilderness of thorns and plants and trees, and there in and out amongst them a narrow way, along which a lady can barely manage to walk without tearing her dress. From the walls you see the yellow roofs of the Imperial Palace buildings within the inner wall, inside the Forbidden City. And you wonder what it must be like to be a Chinese Emperor, brought up under one of those yellow roofs, and never allowed outside that Forbidden City, except for a ceremonial visit to a temple, to pray for rain or fine weather. You see the green-tiled roofs of the princely ducal buildings, far more effective than the yellow by the evening light. On the one side you look at the "Outside City," the China town; on the other the "Inside City," the Tartar town, where the Embassies, etc., are. In the centre of this last, four-square, is placed the Forbidden Imperial City. Then you look out into the distance upon the western hills, beautiful in the sunset light. But it is fast growing dark. As we came out, the sun was still too hot to be pleasant. Now already it is too dark to discern distant objects. We turn back to that oasis in the wilderness of Peking, that fairy palace, the Ying-kuo Fu. We reach once more the beautiful perspective, that makes us long for the British Minister to stand in state with his following, holding a reception of Chinese mandarins, that we might see them all grouped according to their dignities against such a picturesque background. Then looking at the blue and green and golden dragon beams, at the sunshine and the stillness of the courtyards, we feel inclined, like Germans, to evolve the rest of Peking out of our own inner consciousness. Oh, rest ye, brother-mariners, we will not wander more!

Part II.—The Sights of Peking.

The "sights" of Peking have not been on view of late years. It seems a pity, considering how many people have travelled thither hoping to see them. And yet I am not sure that it is not a relief. It seems a duty one owes oneself to go and see those one can, and the people even at those behave with an insolence and indecorum such as I am not quite sure if even seeing the sight makes up for. Anyway, the Temple of Heaven has been closed of late years—that Temple in which to this day worship is offered by the Emperor on behalf of his people, in accordance with a ritual more ancient than any other still in use. The Temple of Agriculture is closed; ditto the Clock Tower and the Bell Tower; ditto, they say, all that remains of the Summer Palace. Even the Examination Hall we could not succeed in getting into. Whilst his one great friend advised us not to attempt the Lamaserai, where the living Buddha in Peking resides, such a set of rowdies are the Lamas. They demand exorbitant sums for opening each fresh gate; they lay forcible hands upon visitors, and finally demand what they please for letting them out again. That very thrilling tale of horrors "The Swallows' Wing" is only a little heightened version of what a traveller who went in might have to undergo. We rode up to the gate, and the expression of the Lamas outside, who thought we were coming in, was enough for me. I have studied the expressions of Neapolitan priests, but they do not compare for vileness with those of these Lamas: the Lamas, too, look fierce—fierce, coarse, and insolent. They of course redouble their demands and insolence, when ladies are among the visitors. The living Buddha himself can only be approached in the guise of a tribute-bearer bringing offerings: a bottle of brandy, a pound of sugar, and a tin of Huntley & Palmer's mixed biscuits, sugared, are said to be the most acceptable. And we considered sending this information to Messrs. Huntley & Palmer for advertising purposes. But even with the biscuits and the brandy there has to be a good deal of arrangement, all of which demands time. And, after all, the living Buddha is only occasionally en statue; at other times he receives like any other Tibetan. And whether one cares to associate with Tibetans at all, except for missionary purposes, is a question. That Buddhism, which with the Chinese is so pure and humane a religion, they have transformed into something so gross, it seems their very gods are unfit to look upon; the God of Happy Marriage impossible to show to a lady, as said the Russian gentleman who had made a collection of images, Chinese, Indian, and Tibetan! Chinese images are all fit for any one to see, as their classics are fit for any one to read; Indian images are questionable; but about Tibetan there seems no question at all, and he simply asked me to advance no farther into his museum, as my husband examined them. It was impossible for me even then not to think that living surrounded by those horrible emblems of divinity, his whole drawing-room full of them, must have some effect upon the unhappy man's character. As I stood among them, an evil influence seemed to emanate from them, and the subsequent career of their unhappy collector confirms the theory; for but a few years later he was dismissed from the Chinese Customs for some crime too bad to mention, dying shortly afterwards. The collection has been bought by a German museum. Let us hope those dreadful Tibetan images are not now poisoning the minds of blue-eyed Germans.

Tibetan musical instruments for sacred purposes are made of virgins' bones (the virgins killed expressly, we were told, but I doubt this); their sacred pledge-cups, of human skulls. They prefer necklaces each bead of which is made out of a tiny portion of a human skull, thus each bone representing a human life. Their idols are represented as wearing human skins, with girdles hung with human heads. So much as this I was allowed to see in this wonderful collection of gods and praying-machines, where meekly pious or coarsely jocund Chinese images sit cheek-by-jowl with graceful, slender Indian deities, and cruel, devilish Tibetan images. After all, no nation's conception of God can be higher than the nation; but it is at least, as a rule, supposed to be as high. Judging them by their idols, it was better, I thought then, to keep out of the way of Tibetan Lamas—little thinking it was to be my good fortune in subsequent years to penetrate into Tibet itself, nor how rudely there I should find the Lamas treat me.

Even the tomb erected to the Banjin Lama at the Hoang Ssu (Yellow Temple) repelled me, in spite of intricate marble carvings, considered well worth the seeing. The workmanship was good, but the outline was simply hideous. Not even purple-blue sky, and golden sunshine, and old fir-trees, with golden-balled persimmons nestling beside them, relieved it from its native ugliness. But alongside of it was a great two-storied building in true Chinese style, that we indeed admired. It stood four-square, with a grandly massive porte-cochère, answering all the purposes of a verandah, so vast was it. We looked at the simple, graceful curves of its two stories of roofs, the upper definitely but only slightly smaller than the lower, and wished that, when it fell to our lot to own a house in China, it might be after this model. For two stories seem advisable for health, and nothing could surpass in roof-grace those grand curves, modelled, it is said, upon the upturning boughs of forest trees, though more probably upon the tent of former ages.

The Confucian Temple, where there are tablets to Confucius and his four great followers, may be called a satisfactory sight, and has remained open of late years. Viewed as a picnic place, it is delightful. The vast courts, with their old, old fir-trees, gave me far more pleasure even than the marble balustrades, or the ancient granite so-called drums we had gone to see. But even there the behaviour of the people was what anywhere else one would call insolent in the extreme. The importunity, sores, and dirt of the Peking gamins render them also a detestable entourage. Things reached their climax, however, at the Hall of the Classics. The open door was as usual banged to in our faces, as we came near; and we were then asked through the closed door how much we would give to get in. Then as soon as we got in, all the detestable rabble following us were let in too, much though I begged they might be kept out. I do not think I had up to that time seen anything so neglected and dilapidated as the Hall of the Classics, the building in all China which one would most expect to see kept in good order, nothing being so much esteemed in China as learning, and especially the learning of the ancients. Some workmen, with almost no clothing, were apparently employed in making it dirtier; but directly we entered they left off doing whatever it was, and devoted themselves to horse-play of the coarsest description, standing upright on their hands, pirouetting their feet over the heads of the crowd who came in with us, knocking some of them down, and rolling them in the dust. They even went so far as to sit down in their more than semi-nude condition on the same bench on which I was sitting, and as near me as possible; whilst all the while there was such a shouting and noise, it was impossible for my husband and me to speak to one another.

It is all very well to remind oneself one is in the presence of a great work, and to try and feast one's soul upon proportions and perspectives in the presence of such lewd behaviour of people of the baser sort. To put it prettily, I was distracted by a great pity for people whose chances in life seemed to have been so small; in plainer English, my temper began to rise. The porcelain arch we had come to see was certainly beautiful, a masterpiece, but not soul-satisfying. We duly noticed the elaborate eaves, protected by netting from the birds. But then came the usual question: How much would we pay to get out? They locked the door in our faces, demanding more money before they would let us out. My husband could stand no more. He was just recovering from a dangerous illness; but he took up a big beam, and smashed open the door. It fell, lintel and all, and the latter so nearly killed a child in its fall the crowd was awed. This just gave us time to get on our donkeys. Then Babel broke loose again, and the storm continued till we had ridden half an hour away, our donkey-men nearly indulging in a stand-up fight in the end, one of them brandishing at the other a very gracefully carved sceptre, that I had just picked up at a fair, to my intense delight. "A nice fellow you are," shouted one to the other. "You ate up all the biscuits, and now you don't know the road. You are worth nothing at all." So that was the way the biscuits had disappeared: the donkey-men had levied toll on our luncheons, and we had suspected the Peking gamins. As there are other porcelain arches in Peking, it might be as well for other visitors to avoid the Hall of the Classics altogether, we thought.

It is horrible to write expressing so much dissatisfaction in the presence of the far-famed masterpieces of a great empire, and the more so as we were very sorry to be leaving Peking, and should much have liked to spend a winter there, studying it all more thoroughly. But Sir Harry Parkes, when he came back to it, said it was returning to "Dirt! Dust! and Disdain!" and the only objection the passing traveller would be likely to make to this sentence is that it might contain a few more D's.

The Observatory is a delightful sight—always barring the behaviour of the custodian, the most loathsome wretch I had yet encountered. And he wanted to feel me all over; did feel all over the Legation Secretary who kindly accompanied us, finally ransacking his pockets for more money than he had thought needful to bestow upon him. The weird, writhing bronze stands of the old instruments, with their redundancy of carving, will be for ever imprinted on my brain. Both those that stand below in a neglected courtyard, and those high above the wall, standing out against the sky, commanding the great granaries and the lovely mountains of the west, with the whole city of Peking lying in between, its courtyards filled with fine trees, giving the whole the aspect of a vast park rather than a populous city—all are beautiful. These wonderful instruments were made under the instructions of the old Jesuits, who so nearly won China to Christianity (would have done so, probably, but for the jealousy of the other religious orders), and who were for years the guides and counsellors of the Chinese Emperors. As to the outside of the pavilions within the Forbidden City, all one was allowed to see of them then, the glittering yellow Imperial roofs are like my childish idea of a fairy palace. There they stand upon their hills, dotted about among the trees, so glittering and graceful, I thought I should never tire of riding past the Green Hill, across the Marble Bridge.