me.

Many of the temples with which Peking abounds are not kept chiefly for worship, nor for the accommodation of the priesthood. Some, indeed, are so maintained, and to one or two of these access is difficult. But the average temple is also let for the accommodation of visitors. Li-HungChang, for instance, has no Peking house. He hires the chief part of a temple. It was there he received The statesman's household seemed pretty well scattered throughout the numerous courtyards and buildings of the temple. Waiting-rooms and reception-rooms were quaintly and incongruously furnished with Chinese objects of art, mingled with presents received by Li on his round-the-world tour. Here was an oil-painting showing Li himself seated in a Belgian park, watching the trial of quick-firing artillery. There was a scroll, hand-written by the Empress-Dowager, setting forth her recognition of Li's virtues, and her wishes for his long life and prosperity.

It was about half-past five in the afternoon, and His Excellency, who had just come in from his day's work at the Tsung-li-Yamen, explained that first he must be excused if he at once proceeded to take some extract of beef. He lived on that, he said. Simultaneously tea and cigarettes were served, and conversation proceeded through the medium of his secretary.

It may perhaps be proper to note here that a day

previously I had had much interesting talk with the secretary, who is known as an accomplished scholar and a most upright man; and it may, therefore, be assumed that His Excellency's polite recognition of the individuality of his visitor was not entirely spontaneous. But the use of such secretarial prompting is part of the machinery of statecraft. It is in the game; and Li was playing it very courteously when he remembered to have met me.

Li-Hung-Chang then, according to his wellknown custom, proceeded to a series of pointed questions. Age, birthplace, means of livelihood, why I came to Peking, and what I hoped to gain thereby, were included in the examination. The comments on the answers were shrewd, and were, no doubt, justified by the age of the speaker.

But Li was more interesting when he ceased from questioning, and proceeded to discussion, chiefly of his own age and prospects of life. He put it most plainly that he had been much distressed at the death of my friends, Mr. Gladstone and Prince Bismarck,' and that these two deaths had warned him that his own end must be drawing near. I naturally pointed out that he was a good bit younger than the other two statesmen, and His Excellency assented to that very promptly, giving the precise number of years by which he was junior. The conversation, which proceeded for some time on such lines, made it, at all events, abundantly

clear that Li-Hung-Chang is desirous to live as long as he can, and to be fit for work all the time. Enough was said to make it clear that His Excellency Li-Hung-Chang is as eager to cling to power as ever were Mr. Gladstone and Prince Bismarck.

CHAPTER II.

FOREIGNERS AT PEKING.

THE Society of the foreign community in Peking is a small but interesting one. First in point of precedence, as in point of importance, we have the foreign ministers, with their wives, secretaries and assistants. These ministers, naturally, have the best of what Peking affords. The legations are handsome and commodious houses, situated, almost invariably, in spacious grounds. Very frequently the substantial part of the legation house is an old temple. It is so, for instance, at the British and at the Russian legations, and in both cases some ingenuity has been exercised in converting the temples of Chinese gods to the domestic uses of the foreigners. At the British legation all the dominant features of Chinese temple architecture have been retained untouched, so that you approach the presence of the British Minister through a hall that might be, and that was, the entrance to a Buddhist shrine. Around the main body of the temple, in the spacious and wooded grounds

of the legation, various minor and modern buildings have been erected; for the population attached to the legation is now large. The legation was, so to speak, the seat of a village, even when I was in Peking, and yet there were expected to arrive after I had left Peking no less than nineteen young gentlemen who were to study Chinese, in order to qualify for posts in the British consular service. Accommodation was to be found somewhere for these nineteen young men, while, as my later information tells me, this considerable legation population was going to be increased after a few weeks by the arrival of a detachment of British marines.

The Russian legation is an equally handsome building in equally spacious grounds, and if the Russian population of civil servants proper was somewhat smaller than the British, the quantity of guards, servants, and the like, at the time of my visit, was greater. And a few weeks afterwards, as we all know, a number of Cossacks arrived to swell the Russian strength. At the legations, other than the British, Russian, and American, I was not a visitor; but one could not go about the town without seeing these houses much in evidence, nor could one frequent the Peking Club without having the pleasure to meet diplomatists and their wives, sisters, cousins and aunts. The diplomatic body, in a word, is necessarily the life, the soul, and the heart of Peking foreign society. It is probably the most