such episodes as the Pamir surrender, which the Chinese Minister chiefly concerned no doubt hoped would never be noticed by his Government. Neither indeed would it, but for the officious foreign press agitating the matter until it reached the ears of the censors, whose proper business it is to look out for subjects of censure on prominent public

men.

All things considered, it would be a far less wonderful thing that a nation of a hundred millions of the most vigorous and resolute people in the world, with all the aids of nineteenth-century civilisation, should subjugate the Chinese, than that a small tribe of seminomads - but possessing, it must be owned, great political geniusshould have done so and retained their hold for 270 years. It would be a veritable invasion of barbarians indeed; for though the Russian élite-mostly of foreign extraction -are highly cultured, and able to hold their own in science, literature, and art with the most advanced races, the Russian masses are distinctly behind the Chinese people in industry, intelligence, and trustworthiness. This is tacitly admitted by Russians; and indeed some of the more philosophical of their politicians are said to dread the effect on themselves of a possible conquest of China, anticipating for the Russian race in that event the experience of other alien conquerors that is to say, absorption into the Chinese mass, and the loss of their own national character. Such theoretical misgivings, however, will never arrest the hand of the men of action, who will be content to do what lies before them, and leave the ulterior consequences to the Fates.

As a practical question, therefore, it comes to this, that Russia has little reason to apprehend from China any serious resistance to her

progress. Time and the hour may be trusted to bring the Cossack even to Peking, unless some revolutionary change, of which there is neither sign nor prospect, should in the meantime turn China inside out, or the problem should become complicated by the interference of other interested parties. And this conclusion we are forced to arrive at, notwithstanding that, on striking a balance theoretically, the advantage of military resources would be found to lie on the side of China. She could not, indeed, hold Ili and Kashgar, but these outlying territories have been a drain on the strength of the empire since the day of their acquisition, and the loss of them would be a strategic gain; nor is the allegiance of Tibet a support which can be relied on in the present day. The deserts in the west and north are more trustworthy protectors than any military force China could maintain on their farther side. It is by the northeast that the empire lies open to invasion, and it is there that Russia is and must always be in force, being compelled to maintain and strengthen that position for her mere security.

But, as already said, it is just in Manchuria that China is much stronger than Russia, so far as natural conditions can make her strong. She has the immense advantages of possessing, in a land of frost, the sunny side of the frontier; of being the mistress of a fighting people, and of a splendid transport service in the myriads of wheeled vehicles, hardy animals, and trained drivers which now convey country produce over vast distances; as well as of being near her own base of supplies. A moderately energetic use of these resources would enable Chinese Manchuria to defy the strongest force that would be ever likely to

be brought on to that theatre of war; but, on the other hand, the neglect of them would throw all these advantages-men, material, and conveyance-into the hands of a capable invader; while the natural richness of Manchuria must ever be an overmastering temptation to a Power owning such a miserable territory as the present Russian empire. It would become the garden of Russia.

Viewing the Chinese empire as a whole also, her militant potentialities would make her more than a match for Russia. Her soil is more fertile, her people superior, she has no debt, and certain important reforms would enable her to manipulate a revenue amply sufficient to carry on even a long war on her own ground. If therefore she is helpless, it is only because she makes herself so.

The latent power of China has been sufficiently shown by the spasms of energy to which she has been from time to time roused. It was such a spasm, prolonged over a decade, that quelled the Taiping rebellion; a spasm recovered Kashgar; and a spasm, unfortunately perhaps, repulsed the French in Formosa and Tongking. Could these explosions of fighting energy be reduced to discipline, and the Chinese forces of all branches organised and maintained in efficiency, China might hold her own against the world. And if, in spite of all that, she is doomed to succumb, it will only be through her own default. Her efforts since 1860, planned by her greatest statesmen, to place herself in line with the foreign Powers which threaten her, have proved so far to be but skindeep. None of those organic reforms which are necessary to place the empire on a level with modern competing States have been so much as thought of; the outward progress

actually made, and at considerable expense, has already undergone reaction; the navy, which was in a fair way to become an efficient arm, is being allowed to slacken down to the old routine; and the company of enlightened statesmen whom the exigencies of the rebellion brought to the front has but one surviving representative, and he over seventy years old. At the end of the nineteenth century, when the world is girdled by electric wires and the obstacles of distance have been cleared away, the Chinese political machine is about as much of an anachronism as was the Holy Roman Empire after the Reformation; and the deliberations of the empire deal with matters as frivolous, and with practical affairs in as frivolous a way, as the Germanic Diet before 1866. reorganise up to the standard of modern requirements would be for China a miracle of regeneration such as no State has ever been able to perform on itself, and which no race has had performed upon it save through long-continued convulsions.

Το

Without venturing on grand speculations as to the development of national life and character, and the ultimate geographical distribution of mankind, we may reasonably infer from its past and present history that, though dynasties may come and go, the Chinese race can never be conquered. There is too much vitality, too strong individuality, too profound a depth of principle, too much intellectual and moral force in the Chinese, for them ever to be absorbed into any other race. But they may change masters, as they have been accustomed to do from time immemorial; and as the reigning dynasty, though alien, may claim to be the most beneficent the nation has ever known, there would be no reason, from the

popular point of view, why another alien conqueror, seated on the Dragon throne, should not in a short time be as welcome as the Manchus have been. Orderly government, and protection for industry and customs, are about all that Asiatic peoples ask of their rulers.

Such considerations, however, by no means exhaust the question. Seldom in national life can any problem be so isolated as that it can be disposed of without reference to collateral relations. With all its apparent helplessness, there is a halo of protection thrown round the Chinese empire by the interests of foreign Powers as much entitled to respect as Russia. It is well understood that one of these Powers has a special concern in the preservation of China as an independent State. The Chinese are among the best customers of England, which alone would be reason enough for the desire to save their commerce from the destructive fiscal policy of any foreign Power which might obtain the control of it. That the interest of Great Britain in China is not purely Platonic was demonstrated to all the world by the active part she took in suppressing the Taiping rebellion, which threatened to depopulate the Yangtze provinces. This position has always been tacitly recognised by the other Powers.

France, flushed with her victories in Tongking in 1884, would undoubtedly have occupied Canton when it lay at her mercy, had she not been restrained by the reflection that inconvenient questions with Great Britain might be raised by the necessary interference with trade which would have resulted. France tried diplomacy instead.

A no less cogent interest links the fate of India to that of China, for were China to become Russianised, the end of British rule in the peninsula would come in sight. The key to the defence of India thus lies in a certain sense in China. This also was made manifest by the arbitrary seizure of Port Hamilton in Korea in 1885, when Russia was on the point of making an encroachment.

Thus, without a word spoken, the whole world feels, if China herself does not, that an invisible ægis shields her in the last resort from destruction. Maybe China, more astute than we give her credit for, presumes somewhat on this impalpable protection, as a reckless son relies on the resources of an indulgent father. But while this may avail her against a coup de main-and recent events in Siam throw a doubt even on that-it is quite inefficacious against the insidious softening of her margins and the imperceptible absorption of her substance.

IT is difficult to conceive a description which would give, in so few words, so accurate a picture as is given here of one of Scotland's greatest poets by another who was his admirer and follower, and, while lacking some of the matchless vigour of his predecessor, excelled him in nobleness of purpose and loftiness of aim. There is nothing which strikes one so much in reading the poems of Dunbar as the immense power of the writer-a power which, if it had ever found its fullest expression, might have raised him to equality with any poet of either kingdom,-the extraordinary command of language and the overflowing facility which enables him as readily to adorn the most delicate and scholarly conception with an exuberance of graces such as Spenser could hardly have surpassed, as to picture a scene of the coarsest merriment in such colours as even Hogarth would not have ventured to put upon canvas. We cannot that he touched nothing that he did not adorn, for it was not rarely his humour to deal with subjects which were incapable of ornament: there were times when that mad, reckless humour, which is so prevalent in all ages of our national literature, seems to have burst all bounds whatever, and the poet has pleased himself in accumulating an abundance of grotesque detail for which we cannot help feeling a certain admiration, however revolting may be the coarseness of the incidents. There are times, too, when he seems

say