On the other hand, but for Gordon and these same eccentricities of military genius China might have been-who knows where ?-without government, a scene of rapine on the titanic scale. Judging after the event, it is easy to overlook the special merit of Li Hung Chang, not so much in employing a foreign soldier--though that made an enormous breach in the wall of Chinese conservatism-but in cordial appreciation of and loyal co-operation with him, which alone rendered this services effective. It was a thoroughly un-Chinese proceeding, which it would have been well for China if it had been more con:sistently followed out in her recent history. From the principle then introduced Li Hung Chang has never swerved, that the strengthening and regeneration of China necessitated the employment of foreign men and foreign methods; and on this he has staked everything and braved the odium of his peers. He was not, indeed, the father of the idea. That honour belonged to Tsêng Kwo Fan, the father of the late Marquis Tsêng, who was some time Minister to Great Britain. Li was his first lieutenant, and lived to put in practice the policy which his chief had bequeathed to his country. That he has been perfectly successful it would be absurd to contend after the exposure of the military weakness of China in the late war; but if the whole position be fairly considered, the failures of the reformer will excite sympathy rather than contempt. The Chinese statesman set himself to remove a mountain, and only succeeded in carting away a few tons of débris. Why was the result so disproportionate to the effort? Primarily, no doubt, it was the inherent difficulty of the task; but the proximate or apparent explanation is that Li Hung Chang stood absolutely alone. The nation was inert, but with a vis inertice which could be irritated into reactionary activity. The political machinery of the country, massive and complex, was set automatically in motion to thwart and obstruct the reforms which the one man was trying to introduce. His was a task requiring the aid of an enthusiastic propaganda, and the reformer made no proselyte. He did not even make friends, only hosts of enemies. And the few foreigners whose support might have been invaluable have leaned rather towards jealousy of his power than cordial support of his measures.

By sheer force of circumstances Li Hung Chang has been the pivot on which the foreign relations of China have turned for thirty years, the indispensable man, who alone, if we except one member of the Foreign Board who died many years ago, ever dared to deal with foreign questions in a businesslike manner. And so he has come to personate China in the imagination of Europe, and to be the bestknown man of that country-so well known, indeed, that his faults and failings have been photographed at close quarters and then enlarged, while his successes have been passed over as flat and uninteresting. But even a glance at the multiplicity of duties that have been imposed on him will impress us rather with the amount

accomplished than with what has remained undone. For the last twenty-five years Li Hung Chang has been 'Viceroy' or GovernorGeneral of the metropolitan province, a territorial office involving much labour and responsibility. In addition to that he has been the Superintendent of Trade for the northern half of the empire, an office which has brought him into constant relations with consuls,. merchants, and representatives of foreign trade, for he had to deal with all commercial questions, disputes, interpretation and execution of treaties, Customs regulations, &c. In that capacity also he has had the task of introducing the telegraph and railway systems, with the responsibility for their operation, and he created and con-trolled a great steamship enterprise; also, within the last few years, cotton mills, in which concerns he took perhaps more than a platonic interest.

These various duties one would be apt to consider sufficient for one man, but they represented but a fraction of what was expected from Li Hung Chang. Though without portfolio, he was de facto Minister for Foreign Affairs, the general negotiator and the ultimate referee in the external relations of the empire. He was Minister of Marine and Lord High Admiral, Commissioner for National Defence, and Inspector-General of Fortifications. He was also Minister for what corresponds in China to the Colonies and India-viz. Tibet, Mongolia, and Korea. In a word, this man has been a whole British Cabinet rolled into one, with perhaps the exception of the Lord Chancellor and Home Secretary. If we imagine the strongest English Minister who ever lived having such multifarious duties crowded upon him, we shall be better able to perceive how Li Hung Chang came short of complete success in his labours! It is true that some of these high diplomatic and executive functions were nominally fulfilled by certain Boards in the capital; but so far from that easing, it only aggravated the labour of the effective man, who had not only these Boards to contend with, but had to work without a staff or an office. Chinese service is denied both the weekly rest and the annual vacation, nor have the Ministers of State the relief of septennial or more frequent refreshing lapses into irresponsible life. A holiday is almost impossible except on urgent ground of healthand wonderful details have sometimes to be gone into by the official applying for sick leave-or on the death of a parent. Fixed periods of mourning are of religious obligation, but are occasionally overridden by the exigencies of the public service, as has happened in the case of Li Hung Chang. Nor has the plea of sickness always availed him. Some five years ago he was prostrated by influenza and almost given up, but he knew no respite from official duties. A local insurrection had broken out in Mongolia, which he was called upon to put down, and he had actually to conduct a campaign from. what looked very like his death-bed.

If we but consider that this unrelieved strain has had to be borne for twenty-five years we shall be able to form an idea how the affairs of China are managed, and to understand what a small gift of prophecy was needed to predict the result of the late war. But the case is not yet exhausted. European experience will hardly help. us to realise the occult side of this immense problem-how one man. is to do the work of a hundred. There was the accumulated inertia. of 2,000 years passively opposing its dead-weight to all attempts. to move it out of the ruts of ages; and there were the incessant and insidious plots against the person and policy of the solitary man which have occupied the minds of the official hierarchy of China during the whole period, and are as active to-day as they have ever been. All things considered, therefore, we may well be surprised not that Li Hung Chang has failed to regenerate China, but that he has survived the struggle. A very progressive Chinaman, the late Tong Kin Sing, was, in conversation with Li Hung Chang, recounting the obstruction that met him everywhere, and concluded by deploring his fate in being born a Chinese. You might say that,' observed the Viceroy, if you had been an official.'

The shortcomings of Li Hung Chang are plain enough, nor have they ever been extenuated. But there is a time for everything, and you need not choose a man's wedding-day to expatiate on the follies of his youth. The occasion of a complimentary visit to our country is scarcely appropriate for setting in array all the demerits of a distinguished man. Artistic justice, to say no more, requires that the lights as well as the shadows of a picture should have their due place. Paragraphs circulate through the Press, not intended to be complimentary, about Li Hung Chang's being the richest man in the world, as if that were the salient feature of his record. But it is ludicrous. Paris, London, New York, and Chicago could each produce its crowd of prominent citizens who could sign a cheque which would buy up the Chinese millionaire, root and branch, while, were the process of acquisition in question, the Occidental would not be able to throw a stone at the Oriental method.

It must, on the whole, be conceded that Li Hung Chang would have well earned his eminent position did his merit extend no further than being the one-eyed man among the blind, a description which has been sometimes applied to him. He must be judged neither by the religious, political, or social laws of foreign countries, but by his own surroundings, traditions, and heredity. See what an enormous change has been wrought by him in the official intercourse between Chinese and foreigners. Think of the impracticable arrogance of viceroys and governors, their studied insolence, their refusal to see foreign officials or to discuss any matter, and their evasions of every practical question; their listening to no argument short of the ultima ratio. It has been the unique merit of Li Hung Chang to

take a common-sense view of things, to meet complaints halfway, to receive suggestions with courtesy, and to set an example of conciliatory demeanour towards foreigners; in a word, to form in his own person a workable joint between the petrified ideas of Chinese polity and the requirements of modern Christendom. He has made himself accessible not only to foreign representatives, but to foreigners of every grade who could show a plausible pretext for occupying his time. His toleration of irrelevant visitors has indeed been remarkable, but it was his only means of studying mankind and of learning something about foreign countries, which fate seemed to veto his ever visiting. Though his conversation was sometimes rough, his etiquette was always respectful; and when there was no serious business on hand, he would ply his visitors with Socratic interrogatories which afforded him amusement and gave them a high sense of their own importance. A sample of this manner is afforded by the way he is now, as these lines are being written, pulling the legs of French journalists and financiers. Could the Viceroy have read English, or French, or German, the solemn reports of correspondents and faddists who attached great value to conversations in which they were made butts of would often have amused him greatly. An ordinary interview with Li Hung Chang in his own Yamên has a curious resemblance to an interview with another astute personage—in Pretoria. They have both a wonderful capacity for sitting, and in their manner there is much in common.

It does not seem a great thing to us, but it was a striking advance for a Chinese official to establish social intercourse with foreigners, to eat and drink with them in public, and even to allow his womankind to emerge from their seclusion, and to share to some extent in the pleasures and pastimes of the Western people. The example in these matters set by Li Hung Chang has not, unfortunately, been followed to any great extent. The initiative was all the more creditable, for it is to be remembered that he braved, it may almost be said outraged, the whole body of traditional propriety that was extant in the empire. Trivial as these matters appear translated into English, they were really large to a Chinese. We have nothing with which to compare it, having no alien civilisation clamouring for admission at our door; but the moral courage of a bishop carrying a foundling in his arms along the Strand, or of the first Brahmin crossing the ocean, may give some idea of the moral courage required.

Nor, though the effect is not of the ostentatious kind, has this rational bearing of Li Hung Chang been barren of beneficial results in the interests of foreigners, merchants, missionaries, and officials. These results are not the less real for belonging largely to the precautionary order, to the class of unobtrusive things, such as those which preserve our bodies in health. The merit of prevention is only recognisable by contrast with the disaster of its failure. The steamer

Drummond Castle might have made fifty successful voyages to South Africa, and her name remained unknown outside shipping offices. What we know positively of the government of Li Hung Chang is that during his whole incumbency everything has gone smoothly between Chinese and foreigners, and that in spite of the fact that the populace of Tientsin contains a large element of ferocity and lawlessness. Matters were not always so. Under Li's predecessor-himself also a great man-serious disturbances occurred in the province, murders of missionaries unavenged culminating in the historical atrocity known as the 'Tientsin massacre' of 1870. Twenty-one Europeans, most of them Catholic sisters, were savagely done to death on that occasion. The crime excited such a feeling among the foreign representatives, that the Government were constrained to depose the popular and powerful Viceroy, Tsêng Kwo Fan. Li, who was engaged at the time in a campaign against the Mohammedan rebels, was summoned to Tientsin, where he has remained in defiance of the law of the service, which limits the term of office. During these five-and-twenty years peace has reigned in the province, and the unruly character of the town population of Tientsin has been practically forgotten. As for the missionaries of all creeds and classes, they have sat under their own vine and fig-tree throughout the whole province, whose magistrates are held personally responsible by the Viceroy for the protection of foreign missions. To solve the thorny missionary question in China-so far, at least, as mere riot and massacre are concerned-all that is wanted is eighteen men like Li Hung Chang to rule over the provinces. If no one else, therefore, at least those missionaries who do not court martyrdom for its own sake have cause to be grateful to this- man.

The selection of Li Hung Chang to succeed Tsêng as guardian of the gate of the capital was the highest compliment that could have been paid to him; and he was there placed in a position where he could give practical effect to the general ideas of national defence originated by his predecessor. The origin of that conception was the invasion of the capital in 1860 by the Anglo-French forces, and the flight and death of the Emperor. Such a calamity must not occur again,' was the watchword of the new progress. Everybody admitted the necessity for an effective defence against maritime attack, and Li grasped the plan of achieving it. It was the homœopathic remedy, to take a hair from the dog that had bitten them. Foreign men, foreign weapons, and foreign methods had to be employed. Such was the general idea, which was first reduced to practice in the suppression of the Taiping rebellion in 1862-4, when Ward, Burgevine, and finally Gordon were employed to drill and lead Chinese troops. The dynasty was saved by these measures; from the Chinese point of view by the judicious use of foreign machinery; from the foreign point of view by Gordon, who was the animating