that other European powers should crave an India likewise. In respect to China herself, she is fully alive to the necessity of calling in European vigour and intelligence, and has made up her mind to procure it; a step the natural consequence of contact with Europeans, and over which we have no control. If the Governments of Europe were to agree to withhold the service of their troops, this would not prevent the employment of private individuals from Europe or America, and we have seen only recently how easy it is to evade the jurisdiction of the foreign consul by the simple process of hailing for a Chinaman, or from any State not represented on the spot. The Chinese Government can command foreign aid if so disposed, but irresponsible enlistment of foreigners is on all grounds objectionable and dangerIt has been tried, and the results have been what might have been anticipated-waste, peculation, and danger to the State. What indeed is the experience of those European Powers who have at different times independently raised foreign legions?

ous.

The Taoutai of Shanghai long since tried the experiment upon his own responsibility of forming a European-Chinese fleet, and utterly failed, after spending millions of dollars. He bought up in 1853 a number of vessels, manned and officered them with all the dregs of our settlements; without proper status or discipline they were sent up to fight Taepings at Nankin, and of course ran away. Other mandarins hired lorchas under European flags to protect trade on the coast; these likewise turned upon their employers, and, instead of fighting pirates, frightened their employers. The last item of news from China is, that the crews of some hired lorchas had passed over in a body to the pirates, and that one of Ward's regiments had mutinied after his death, and looted the yamun of a high official.

In our opinion, there is, in view

of the interests of all European Powers, but one mode of giving aid to the Chinese Government — to wit, encouraging officers of character and respectability, subjects of those Powers, to enter the service of the Chinese Government.

We have with China an enormous and profitable trade; we want it guaranteed and developed. This duty properly devolves upon China, but she is as yet unable to discharge it. It is by the aid of men who possess both character and status, the guarantee of good behaviour, that she will acquire strength and knowledge to fulfil her obligations, and through their influence be induced to adopt the results of European science and skill-the steamship, railways, and electric telegraph-thus insuring progress profitable to herself and the world at large. This end, we take it, should be our object in giving help to China. She should not be strengthened out of hand, but by a slow process with a small force, whose action should be spread over a period sufficient to enable us to open the country, throughout its length and breadth, to Christianity and commerce.

Views in consonance with the foregoing remarks appear to have found favour at Pekin, but owing, doubtless, to the different views entertained by the Ministers of England, France, Russia, and America, the Regency has been dragged first in one direction and then in the other. Russia is evidently ready for direct intervention. In 1860 she persuaded the Emperor of China to barter square miles of territory for old rifles, and we hear that the Czar's ships are ready to retake Nankin. The capture of that city is just now worth a province to the Court of Pekin. The French and ourselves have been flirting with the question, watching and checkmating each other, rather than promoting the real interests of China. Not, perhaps, because Sir Frederick Bruce has not been aware of what was really essential, but because

he was apprehensive, probably, of compromising our Ministry in any direct line of policy. The result has been that small bodies of Imperialists have been drilled by English and French officers upon totally different systems, in spots scattered all over the sea frontier of China. Every one of these half-trained braves will be as dangerous as a Taeping, unless he be under efficient discipline and thorough control. No regular organisation has been attempted, and we cannot but fear that such trifling with a very serious question will lead to great evils. As an instance, permission has just been given to all our military officers, of any stamp, to accept commissions in China. The officer of repute is thus placed on a footing with discharged seamen and marines now holding the rank of Colonels and Majors in the Chinese army, while the Chinese Government is unfairly left to discriminate between the good and the worthless. A surer method of bringing discredit upon ourselves, and involving us eventually in direct intervention, could scarcely be devised.

Surrounded with difficulties, Prince Kung appears to have rightly turned his first attention to the organisation of a maritime police, and given a willing ear to the counsels of the Acting InspectorGeneral, Mr Hart, supported by our able Minister. Instructions have been issued for a certain sum to be set aside from the customs revenue, and the chief of that department has been authorised to take such steps as would accomplish the desired object. These instructions are interesting, and evince a real desire to master the subject; whilst the admission that a departure from ancient custom is necessary, is highly significative of the dawn of progress in China. Prince Kung writes from Pekin in February last as follows:

"The Foreign Office repeat the instructions they have already given the Inspector-General, to give effect to the

arrangement for the purchase of foreign steamers with the utmost despatch. The orders to the various customhouses to get ready their quota were issued some time back; and these orders have been repeated, coupled with a caution against delay, as it is the Emperor's particular wish that not a day should be lost. The Board understand that there are several classes of foreign steamers the mail steamer, the merchant steamer, and the war steamer; that the first is very small, the second the reverse of handy, and that neither are available like the third for warlike purposes. They are further informed that the mail and merchant steamers are paddle wheel steamers, while the war steamers are 'secret wheel' (screw) vessels. This is a point of great importance, to which they would draw the special attention of the Inspector-General. The money being now ready for transmission, there is no reason why there should be any, the slightest, delay."

The despatch gives instructions upon other points, and concludes with again urging the InspectorGeneral to lose no time, closing with the words, "Hasten! hasten!!"

The Inspector-General, obliged by ill-health to return to England, was the better able to work out the desires of the Emperor's Council, and put himself in communication with Her Majesty's Government, with a view to obtain their necessary sanction before he could legally purchase a vessel or employ a British subject. He was, above all, desirous to insure the thorough respectability and good character of the European force destined to guide as well as aid the Chinese-at the same time, to take care that the help should be granted in a way to insure real progress at Pekin, and thus guard against a return to the old policy of exclusion as soon as the officials were relieved from the fears and difficulties of their present position

and to effect this in such a manner as should not supersede, but merely supplement, the action of the Chinese themselves. This maxim should ever be borne in mind in our dealings with China. To supersede the native authority, besides humiliating him, brings about no beneficial result.

Her Majesty's Government met the proposals of the InspectorGeneral on behalf of the Emperor of China in an enlightened spirit, guarding themselves, however, carefully against any risk of being charged with intervention. Mr Lay offered the post of Commander-inChief of the European-Chinese naval force to Captain Sherard Osborn, C.B., which office, under the sanction of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Board of Admiralty, he gladly accepted. The necessary authority from Her Majesty in Council was issued, authorising the Inspector-General Horatio Lay and Captain Sherard Osborn to purchase such vessels and enter such British subjects as might be necessary, without an infringement of the Foreign Enlistment Act. With the permission of the Admiralty, Captain Osborn selected the following officers :-Captain Hugh Burgoyne, V.C., as second in command; Commander C. S. Forbes; Lieutenants Arthur Salwey, Noel Osborn, F. C. Vincent, H. M. Ommanney, Allen Young, and G. Morice; Mr Henry Collins in charge of the Paymaster's and Storekeeper's Departments; and Doctors John Elliot, F. Piercey, Fegan, and others, of the hospital arrangements. Officers of the highest stamp have been likewise selected from the mercantile marine, and no seamen or marines have been entered except such as could show years of good conduct.

It is, moreover, Mr Lay's intention to enlist presently in this force the subjects of the other Treaty Powers, so as to render it a European Chinese force, in accordance with the principle successfully carried out in the customs administration.

As the funds arrived from China the vessels and stores were purchased. The Admiralty afforded the same facilities from our arsenals as would have been conceded to any other friendly Power. From the superabundant ships in our navy the Emperor of China was

allowed to purchase the Mohawk, Africa, and Jasper, and they were re-named respectively the Pekin, China, and Amoy. There being no others available, and the private yards having been swept by the Federals of such vessels as could carry guns or serve for warlike purposes, it became necessary, in spite of the delay it would entail, to enter into contracts for the construction of three other vessels, which will be launched in March. The six vessels-three of them despatch-vessels fit to cope with the stormy seas of the Chinese seaboard, and the other three for river service-form as small a force as it is safe to begin with. It is intended that they shall carry about 40 guns, and be manned by 400 European officers and seamen, of the very best character. During the interval occupied in the building of some of the vessels and equipment of the others, there has been abundant occupation in arranging the details necessary for a sound organisation. A code of laws for the good order and comfort of all, based upon the customs of a European navy, has been compiled, so that Prince Kung's seal may render it the future naval law of China. The scale of pay, rations, prize-money, and pensions for wounds, has been carefully considered, to meet the requirements of the special service. A signal-book has been adapted for intercommunication; and, strange as it may sound, even an ensign-green ground intersected by two yellow diagonal bands, and bearing the Imperial crest- had to be improvised, inasmuch as in China every armed native vessel flies her own colours according to the whim of her master, an irregularity to which it is very necessary a stop should be put.

No one will deny that the task about to be undertaken is an arduous one; yet, after having carefully weighed all its difficulties, we cannot help feeling sanguine of a successful issue. A good maritime police is the secret of government in China. If the water-ways of

China are in a state of security and order, peace will re-establish itself everywhere. The rivers, the seas, and lakes and canals, within the area of the Empire, cut it up into such sections that rebellion will be destroyed in detail, or rather starve, directly a strong executive is placed upon the Emperor's waters. The Taepings and other banditti spread over the area they have devastated, by availing themselves of the extensive water-communication. The Government of Pekin, if it is wise, will pursue the same course in its measures of repression. The steam gunboat and the electric telegraph, by their very appearance in the disturbed districts, will re-assure those who have almost ceased to believe in any government, and frighten away the evildoers; whilst the fall of Nankin will break the neck of a scourge which is on its last legs. The fleets of piratical junks which now infest the coasts of China, and whose depredations are known only to the natives, will, we hope, disappear before the vigorous operations of a steam flotilla under the Imperial flag. These "vikings" of the East occupy every creek between Canton and the borders of Cochin-China; they have quite cut up the native trade of the whole seaboard, and occasionally pirate even European traders. It is mainly owing to these gentry that we have been unable as yet to establish relations and open a customhouse at KiungChow in the island of Hainan, a point which we hope one day to see the centre of an enormous trade.

Lastly, we see every reason to expect most important results from the information the officers of the European-Chinese flotilla will be able to gather of the interior of the Chinese Empire, and of the commercial advantages likely to flow

therefrom. As employés, though merely temporarily so, of the Emperor, they will have access to every part of that vast country, and excite no fears or jealousy; their opportunities will be immense, and we have reason to believe that they will bear well in mind the duty they owe to their fellow-men of gathering and storing well every crumb of information, geographical and otherwise. What they may effect for the benefit of our commerce, we may estimate from the fruits that have already followed in the wake of their brethren of the navy of England who first penetrated to Shanghai in 1842, and to Hankow in 1858. There are cities as rich as the former, rivers as large as the Yang-tsze, and lakes equal to those of Canada, to be re-discovered. Those almost unknown provinces of the interior are not wastes profitable only to the geographical enthusiast, but countries equal to states of Europe, thickly dotted with cities, and densely populated, with a people second only to ourselves in commercial energy and respect for law and order. England for years has spent wealth, energy, and precious lives in opening China to Western influence and civilisation. To-day, her success is certain. The Government and people of China both ask us to aid them in their hour of trouble, and in return they will assuredly grant us that access and commercial freedom for which we have so long laboured and so often fought. The portals of ignorance and heathenism are opening. Shall we, who are in the vanguard of nations, hesitate? No-assuredly not! Our motto must ever be "Forward;" and will not all enlightened Christendom join us in wishing "God speed to those about to put forth in this fresh enterprise to the land of Cathay?

THE next morning the sun shone into my windows so brightly that I rose at an earlier hour than I had been accustomed to do for months, and strolled into the gardens, interesting myself in considering the painter's charge against dressed ground and Tracey's ingenious reply to it. The mowers were at work upon the lawns. Perhaps among rural sounds there is none which pleases me more than that of the whetting of the scythe-I suppose less from any music in itself, than from associations of midsummer, and hay-fields, and Milton's 'Allegro,' in which the low still sound is admitted among the joyous melodies of Morn. As the gardens opened upon me, with their variety of alleys and by-walks, I became yet more impressed than I had been on the day before, with the art which had planned and perfected them, and the poetry of taste with which the images of the sculptor were so placed, that at every turn they recalled some pleasing but vague reminiscence of what one had seen in a picture, or in travel; or brought more vividly before the mind some charming verse in the poets, whose busts greeted the eye from time to time in bowery nook or hospitable alcove, where the murmur of a waterfall, or the view of a distant landscape opened from out the groves, invited pause and allured to contemplation.

At last, an arched trellis overhung with vine leaves led me out into that part of the park which fronted the library, and to which the Painter had given his preference over the grounds I had just quitted. There, the wildness of the scenery came on me with the suddenness of

VOL. XCIII.-NO. DLXVIII.

a surprise. The table-land, on which the house stood on the other side of the building, here abruptly sloped down into a valley through which a stream wound in many a maze, sometimes amidst jagged rocklike crags, sometimes through low grassy banks, round which the deer were grouping. The view was very extensive, but not unbrokenly so; here and there thick copses, in the irregular outline of natural groves, shut out the valley, but still left towering in the background the wavy hill-tops, softly clear in the blue morning sky. Hitherto I had sided with Tracey; now I thought the Painter right. In the garden, certainly, man's mind forms a visible link with Nature, but in those scenes of Nature not trimmed and decorated to the book-lore of man, Thought takes a less finite scope, and perhaps from its very vagueness is less inclined to find monotony and sameness in the wide expanse over which it wanders to lose itself in reverie.

Descending the hillside, I reached the stream, and came suddenly upon Henry Thornhill, who, screened behind a gnarled old pollard-tree, was dipping his line into a hollow where the waves seemed to calm themselves, and pause before they rushed, in cascade, down a flight of crags, and thence brawled loudly onward.

As I know by experience how little an angler likes to be disturbed, I contented myself with a nod and a smile to the young man, and went my own way in silence; but about an hour afterwards, as I was winding back towards the house, I heard his voice behind me. I turned; he showed me, with some pride, his

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