letter I shall be well started up the stream.

A pleasanter addition to my personnel, and a sweeter, for he does not eat garlic nor smoke opium, is a small Manilla poodle, Nou-nou by name, whom I have inherited. He has consoled the exile of a succession of diplomatists at Peking, and has finally fallen into my hands. He is the jolliest little dog, and has the most companionable ways. Although only a shade bigger than your Tiny, he is as plucky as Tom Sayers, and is the terror of strange dogs and Chinamen; indeed his valour being much too great for his body often brings him to trouble. For many years he would fly at any dog that he saw in any part of the Legation, and bid him get out of his majesty’s way; but now he is no longer in his _première jeunesse_, having received much hard usage from dogs over whom as puppies he had been used to exercise a terror, especially from one big black retriever, who won’t stand any nonsense. Nou-nou has taken possession of our courtyard, where by tacit consent the other dogs seem to respect his authority. If one of them so much as shows his nose there, Nou-nou pricks his ears, his tail curls as crisply as of old, and he flies at the intruder, who quickly disappears. Here Nou-nou leads a happy life; every one has a kind word for him, and his only grievance is, that on Mondays and Thursdays he is carried off by a big Chinaman, from his holy looks like a pre-Raphaelite picture, known as “the apostle,” and summarily washed.

We have better news from Shantung. The Imperialist troops have driven back the rebels. There is now no danger of this province being invaded, which might have been a serious thing for us, and certainly would have resulted in the sacking of Tientsing. It is really provoking, after all the pains that have been taken to induce this wretched Government to save itself, which it could easily do by the most ordinary exertion, to see half a dozen archers outside the gates making such practice at a target twenty yards off as any girl of eighteen, member of a toxophilite club at home, would be ashamed of. Yet this is the stuff which the Chinese Government are content to accept as the means of putting down the insurrection. The troops that they are drilling in the European fashion are merely a sop to foreign representatives, and not the evidence of earnest wishes to improve. Self-help and self-improvement seem repugnant to the nature of this belly-patting Buddhist nation. They are willing enough to get foreign officers, especially Englishmen, in whom the example of Colonel Gordon has given them unbounded confidence, to drill and lead their troops; but they will do nothing for themselves; and there is a class of superior officers (such as Li, the governor of the province in which Shanghai is situated) who, having acquired a certain reputation for valour and military ability among their own people, consider it beneath their dignity to serve under foreign officers. The obstacles which such men throw in the way of the latter, together with the uncertainty of being able to obtain supplies and pay for the troops under their command, render their position intolerable, as Colonel Gordon found on more than one occasion. The English officers who have been lent to instruct the Imperialists have found their way in many instances anything but smooth, and have had great difficulty in carrying out the measures which they deemed necessary. Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that the rebels, whose ranks are swelled by the local banditti, secret societies, and Imperialist soldiers mutinous for want of pay, should still show a head.

With this internal difficulty pressing them sorely, the Chinese continue persistently to break their treaty engagements with the Great Powers, any of which, if it were so minded, has a handle for blowing up the whole concern. Wên-Hsiang, who is the chief of the Board of Foreign Affairs [which he virtually directs, although the Prince of Kung is nominally at its head], and who is the most advanced and patriotic man in the Government, is fully conscious of the danger of the situation; but unfortunately he is a timid man, and it is one thing to convince a Chinaman, and another to induce him to act upon his conviction. So the treaties continue to be broken, and the existence of the present dynasty in China hangs upon the patience of foreign governments, who have too great a stake in the country to sink the ship so long as there is a hope of her floating.

It is only fair to say, on the other hand, that the residence of foreign representatives at Peking during the last four years has certainly been productive of some good. As an evidence of this, Dr. Martin, an American missionary, has produced, at the expense of the Board of Foreign Affairs and with the co-operation of a commission specially appointed by the Prince of Kung, a translation into the Chinese language of Wheaton’s _International Law_. To this Tung-ta-jên, whom I mentioned in my last letter to you as the translator of Longfellow’s “Psalm of Life,” has added a preface. This preface, coming as it does from the vice-president of the College of Historians, one of the chiefs of the lettered class in China, adds great authority to the work, the publication of which is certainly an event of importance in the history of the country.