Chinese Government risked everything, even to Sir Thomas Wade's leaving Peking in his indignation, rather than in any way consent to the incrimination of Tsen the Viceroy. Li Hung-chang spared no pains to propitiate, even to the sending of his own brother Li Hanchang on a mission to far-distant Yunnan to inquire into the matter, but he took care that Tsên also was on the commission of inquiry, thus invalidating it from the outset. Tsên came from Kwangsi, the province now so disordered, on one side at least connected with the aboriginal tribes of that province, whom he abandoned for the side of the Chinese Government, let us say of law and order, and thus assisted in quelling. He then rose to be Viceroy of Yunnan and Kweichow, and there suppressed the Mahommedan rebellion, bathing the country in bloodshed. After the fashion since followed in Blagovestschensk by Gribsky, Ataman of Cossacks, he ordered the old men, women, and children to be driven into the beautiful lake at Talifu, thus saving the trouble of beheading and burial; and when the Chinese General charged with the office remonstrated that such a deed was contrary to all moral principles, Tsên, the father, is said to have replied: "You have nothing to do with moral principles, your business is with the penal code." For some reason it is evident that the Chinese Government of that day was ready rather to risk a war with Great Britain than even to inquire into the complicity of this man in the murder of Margary, a complicity of which as the years have passed there has been increasing evidence, and for which murder in any case a Viceroy according to Chinese usage ought to be held responsible.

It is the son of this man who at the early age of forty-three has been appointed acting Viceroy of Szechuan, after having already held the office of Governor of Shansi. His wife, coming

by the Yangtse river to join him here, died on the way up. His son has died also. Since his arrival here one of his concubines has died. These deaths preclude him from receiving visitors at the New Year according to Chinese custom, and he has intimated to the officials that the Viceregal gates will be closed on New Year's Day. On the Eve, however, all were taking leave of him, and at least twenty uniforms of different shades of gaudy red and orange, only somewhat toned down by Chinese characters in black velvet, were to be counted in his outer courtyard with the same number of red official umbrellas.

But the Viceroy is further saddened by a possibly yet greater trouble. For four months no rain has fallen, and before that there was a shortage; 12,000 beggars are being retained in a lingering death in life by means of rice-soup kitchens outside the gates, and besides these a large working-class population is being reduced to destitution. The beggars do not work, they only paint themselves strange colors, and make unearthly noises and beg in various sad ways, sometimes crawling along the roadway without feet, sometimes an old white-haired crone proceeding slowly down the roadway on her knees, sometimes an aged man bent double under the weight of a crippled wife, round whose head fly scattered white hairs. The last crops were a failure; there is no promise of any crop at all in the spring among the mountains to the south. Even the well-irrigated Chentu plain has been reduced to somewhat acrid dust, and in the mountains beyond there is despair. The Viceroy is multiplying soldiers; he has cut off heads, even that of eighteen-year-old Miss Liao, daughter of a family of Literati, who had won the reputation of a Kwanyin Pusa, or Goddess of Mercy, amongst the Boxers of the neighborhood, and when she was betrayed by

treachery, for she was then living quietly in her own home, asked no mercy for herself, only that her young brother might be set at liberty. "He is not guilty. I alone am responsible. II am the guilty one," said the young girl, of whom report says that she was both beautiful and learned. Even the Viceroy shrank from beheading her, but a telegram to Peking received answer from the Empress Tse-hsi, the inexorable: "The maid must die." So she was beheaded, and only a few days afterwards the chief of the Boxer band was caught, and then the Viceroy said if he had been caught a few days earlier the young girl's life might have been spared.

But all this, it may be said, is quite intelligible, quite in accordance with the nature of a European. So is it that the Viceroy has been praying for rain. He says with passion: "I have prayed as much as I can and yet no rain comes." He has gone out by the north gate at least two miles from his Yamen by night, having the gate opened on purpose, as he alone of all men could, and proceeded to the celebrated Buddhist Temple some three miles further and there prayed in the early dawning. This also we can understand. For three weeks at one Christmas-time he ordered a fast so strict that no man could sell chickens or even eggs without having his ears slit off-it was really done; he even ordered the south gate to be closed, as is usual in times of great heat and drought.

But besides all this he set a soldier to stand on the wall by the north gate with one of the hand pumps used at fires, squirting up at the inexorable sky so as to pull down rain from Heaven. And yet no rain came. At this season no rain is expected here, but rather the crisp, dry, sunshiny weather we have been having, with the thermometer at thirty-five many mornings, rising up to fifty sometimes in the course of the

day. Then the Viceroy gave up the fast for a time, reopened the south gate and waited. But before that people said he walked the streets-he, a Chinese Viceroy, who never walks-and in mourning garments, as a confession of sins. Then again he ordered a fast, once more ordered every man to stick a willow bough in water at his door, place a writing on black paper over his house, but, odder still, ordered every little group of houses to provide a pig and make it squeal to Heaven for rain, or those houses that were too poor to afford a real pig to get a paper pig and beat drums and sound horns, and so try to attract Heaven's ear. Now there are stranger stories still, that by the north gate by which rain, or at this season rather snow, should enter, a pig has been placed upon the wall and is by the Viceroy's orders singed every day, so that its cries may reach Heaven's ears, as indeed they well might; and another stranger story still is that at the temple outside the north gate, or in the close neighborhood of that temple, in the Viceroy's presence a living pig was offered in sacrifice, kerosene being poured over it and then set alight. All these are old Chinese usages, but even Chinese shrug their shoulders at the Viceroy reviving them now. They do not so much mind the fast at Christmas-time, but they have been greatly annoyed by a fast being ordered again just before their New Year, the one fortnight of holidays into which a Chinese tries to cram all the delight of all our Bank holidays and Sundays united.

All shops are closed now, red paper with fine black letter inscriptions hanging over every door, and pasted down the door posts; the shop signs are wrapped in red cloth, with gold and silver paper money hanging down over them. Everyone has got new paper lanterns outside the door and inside, some so pretty, and all smart people

have got new paper windows beautifuly painted. A bank I visited had sprays of blossom painted on all its paper panes, figures in dull rich colors on its lanterns, and landscapes in the finest Cantonese embroidery hanging on its walls, red curtains over the doors, and red hangings over the chairs. The effect was much more like the Alhambra than Lombard Street. But I have never seen anything quite so pretty on the stage. Everything has been washed that the people know how to wash, everything has been swept up. It has not been done since last year. All who can afford to either buy or hire them have got new clothes. Even the very poor are crowding the pawnshops, which alone are still open, getting their clothes out of pawn. The streets are strewn with the crackers fired to drive away the evil spirits, they are rosy also with great boughs of pink sweet-scented blossom. All the flower gardens outside the gates have hired the finest entrances in the principal streets, tempting the passer-by to hire for the New Year season with their little dwarfed and twisted trees covered with blossom, and large oblongshaped pots in which are exquisitely arranged together mauve Chinese primroses, sweet-scented white narcissi, a dwarfed camellia in blossom in front of a dwarfed plum or peach burgeoning, the whole thrown into relief by dark red beetroot leaves and a fantastic bit of rock. The streets are full of masks, so are the passers' hands; every man wears a new cap, stiff paper wrapped on the top of his old one.

Even into the old-world streets, that date from before the time of Marco Polo, something of the New Year penetrates in the shape of red paper inscriptions on the retired gateways, that neither forbid entrance nor invite approach, withdrawn somewhat from the roadway, which is wide, with trees down either side, as noted by the ob

servant Venetian, and antique stone basins brimful of water hard by in case of fire. We seem to hear the footfalls of the men of long ago, as we wander on past the great Confucian Temple shut in amongst a grove of magnificent trees.

There are old-world bits and to spare inside Chentu city. Outside the east gate among the pretty pavilions of the garden by the river, where Mandarins go to drink wine and see each other off by boat, there is a well, down which a woman patriot flung herself in the Tang Dynasty (sixth to ninth century A.D.) The opening is so narrow one shudders at the determination she must have exercised, nor wonders at the large stone tablet commemorating the deed. Behind a grove of fine old cypresses outside the south gate there is a hill, tree-covered, that marks the spot where Liu-pei's body lies, he of the Yellow City, he of the Three Kingdoms. There are ancestral halls, and temples with stately courtyards, and wonderful little gardens full of shrubs twisted out of all nature. will take sixty years to perfect that one," says a long-haired Taoist priest contemplating it with his head on one side, pondering perchance whether the turn of this twig, the truncating of that branch will meet the approval of posterity. Groves of bamboos, summerhouses built across running water, huge Nan-mu trees with their smooth stately trunks, wide-branching soap trees, spined with thorns all suggesting the long, hot, breathless days of a Szechuan summer, surround temples whose proportions and approaches charm rather than their details. Not but that the lacquer columns are often fine, the roof curves always magnificent. The soul feels at rest contemplating these last against the sky. And again and again one

"It

wonders what is to become of these interesting reliques of antiquity, these peaceful sanctuaries with their fine timbers both cut and uncut, if deter

mined Europe and America succeed in converting this patient people from the errors of Buddhism, the incantations of superstition-bedraggled Taoism.

We

In

But the gates will be closing. are not Viceroys to open them. crowds the crows are cawing raucously on their way to their nests among the Manchu trees. We have not time to consider that lovely pale pink efflorescence of plum blossom among the lower trees, nor that field of sweet-scented narcissi, white and yellow, which you in England now call the Chinese Lily. With a sound as of a mighty organ pipe the innumerable pigeons swoop this way and that about the lofty walls before taking their last homeward flight, each with a cane, giving out a sound like an Æolian harp, tied under its tail feathers. Pretty green Yunnan parrots with red beaks are being taken in for the night from the perches outside the door, where they have sat all day. Mocking-birds, with little imitation tables in the middle of their cages, flowery eyebrowed thrushes, those that sing and those that fight and those that do both, are being covered up in Chinese blue cotton nightcaps. It is time for all to seek the refuge of their homes, where the wind blows in at every crevice of both the floor and the ceiling, over the latter of which parade great droves of rats; where walls are replaced by lath and plaster screens that yet do not screen from the cold night air; where therefore everyone sits about as in bed in sheepskin waistcoats and heavily wadded and fur-lined overgowns, a symphony in green brocades sable-cuffed outside, or a harmony in dark purple and pale blue, not to speak of the other "hundred lovely hues made solely to be seen."

It is pleasant to think of a whole cityful given up to at least a fortnight's unmixed enjoyment-the better-class shops will not open for three weeks.

But through it all the Viceroy mourns. And besides all his other cares, there is the Roman Catholic Bishop pressing for compensation for every cottage destroyed by Boxers, that belonged to a real or nominal Roman Catholic convert, insisting on himself assessing the damage, and the head of the American Mission doing likewise, the representatives of the various Syndicates complaining loudly of any evasion with regard to the various concessions they say were granted them, a Japanese Consul persistent, an English Consul ditto, a German and a French Consul on their way, and an English ConsulGeneral arriving, each to keep a wary look-out on the others' claims against China, which is not yet a corpse, is yet a living country. "But-but we are weak," say Chinese officials, "we dare not resent insolence." They certainly get it. Year's season there must be many painful moments in the Viceroy's Yamen, for Tsên is not a man to whom yielding can come natural. How he must wish foreigners were the Kweidze evil spirits that Chinese love to call them. Then they would be driven away by the burst of crackers. Pop! pop! pop! they go. Happy little boys setting them off! Surely nowhere is boy childhood happier than in China, unburdened by that great trouble of childhood in other lands, the keeping themselves clean. And yet so fine; red brocade gowns, long violet jackets over them, and possibly a green wadded jacket on the top! How warm and comfortable and easy!

So they get it. For all the New

It seems a pity ever to grow into a man in China, which came as it now is in the childhood of the world, and is only bothered by all these strange nations, that have come into life and grown up since then, premature wiseacres. People of pigtails and pagodas, with your childlike one-syllable talk, and your merry monsters mouthing one-sidedly,

why must you grow up and be men. under pain of ceasing to be? Why should not China remain the one living fairy-tale land peopled by dwarfs and gnomes and generally unreasonable beings, brandishing tricorner flags bigger The Cornhill Magazine.

than themselves as weapons of defence, and dressing up like tigers with stealthy step and spring to terrify the enemy? Why, oh why, must everything be modernized and Europeanized as with a whitewash?

It may be remembered by readers of "Rob Roy" that on a certain Sunday afternoon-an afternoon of ineffable boredom-Sir Hildebrand Osbaldiston's sons disperse "to the pastimes to which their minds severally inclined them,"-Percie to discuss a pot of March beer with the steward, Thorncliff to cut a pair of cudgels, John to dress May-flies, Dickon to play at pitchand-toss by himself, and Wilfrid to bite his thumbs and hum himself into a slumber,-while the good knight himself, after a passage at arms with that arch dissembler Rashleigh, whom he both fears and distrusts, abruptly exclaims: "Have a care, thou provena too cunning for thyself-two faces under one hood is no true heraldry. And since we talk of heraldry, I'll go and read Guillim." The modern country squire has probably never heard of "Guillim," much less read that classical volume; and if by chance he unearthed it from the dusty shelves of his neglected library, the perusal of a few pages would make him end as Sir Hildebrand began, "with a yawn resistless as that of the goddess in the Dunciad." And yet to minds of a certain bent there is much that is interesting and attractive in the "Display of Heraldry by John Guillim" -for choice, the fifth edition, dedicated "to the most august and dread sovereign, Charles II.," and "interlaced with much variety of history.” All students of the Science of Arms owe a

debt of gratitude to Guillim, for his was the first attempt to systematize and illustrate the subject, and his work stands in much the same relation to Heraldry as Grimod de la Regnière's immortal treatise does to the masterscience of cookery. No one goes for a recipe to the one or for a coat of arms to the other. Yet each of them is in its way a classical work, full of sententious maxims and quaint illustrations, and in Guillim's case deeply tinged with symbolism. It was as if the herald had the key to unlock the secret book of Nature, and to him only was revealed the hidden meaning of all things in heaven and earth. Each armorial bearing had its peculiar significance, not only the lion and the eagle, but the baser kind of reptilesthe scorpion and the cockatrice,-and this not only in the case of animate objects, but of flowers, metals, implements of war, and so forth; but even terrestrial bodies do not suffice him, for, as Fuller says, "he mounteth to the verie skies about Stars (but here we must call them estoiles) and Planets, their use and influence."

Of recent years, Heraldry, which was regarded by our ancestors as a necessary part of a liberal education, has fallen into neglect and disrepute. It has been described as the science of fools with long memories, or as an eccentric collection of monstrous symbols described in a barbarous jargon. And