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interest to me, is kind of index to British history; but its value would be greatly increased if an index were added to it, virtually classifying its contents according to events as well as according to names, to enable one to find out not only what a given man has done, but who has been the doer of a given thing. The index-maker, though he deserves the hearty blessing of all readers, represents the lowest stage of a whole class of work daily becoming more important. There are many manuals and monograms useful either as guides to the student of some special subject or as supplying the specialist with such knowledge as he requires of subjects more or less conterminous with his own. But the need for such work steadily increases. When one thinks of the The Speaker.

stream daily setting into the British Museum and of the horror raised by any suggestion that any limit should be set to it, one may be pardoned for thinking more of the correlative necessity. Our catalogues and indexes and calendars have been immensely improved of late years, and at least made paths through the tangled wilderness. Still my heart sometimes sinks at the thoughts of the vast trouble that we are bequeathing to our children; I begin to think more kindly of the Sultan Omar, and to wonder whether there a judicious incendiary might not be a benefactor in disguise. The wickedness of such thoughts needs no demonstration; and the effectual way of suppressing them is to promote any system which can deal effectually with the powers of chaos and darkness.

Leslie Stephen.

THE DEAD.

The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still ; They have forged our chains of being for good or ill, And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.

Our perishable bodies are the mould

In which their strong imperishable will

Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil

Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.

Vibrations infinite of life in death,

As a star's travelling light survives its star!

So may we hold our lives that when we are
The fate of those who then will draw their breath,
They shall not drag us to their judgment bar,

And curse the heritage which we bequeath.

Mathilde Blind.

AUGUST 4, 1900.

READINGS FROM NEW BOOKS.

LEGATION STREET IN PEKING.*

At the close of the war in 1860, the humiliated government, accepting the presence of foreign envoys at Peking as a necessary evil, offered the Summer I'alace inclosure for a great diplomatic compound, and then a tract of land immediately outside the west wall for a foreign concession. Sir Harry Parkes led in emphatically repudiating these offers, and the Liang-Kung fu (palace of the Duke of Liang) was bought for a British legation, Duke Tsin's fu becoming the French legation. A fu always has green tiled roofs, stone lions before the five-bayed entrance gate, and four courts and pavilions beyond, and a fu is assigned to each imperial son outside of the succession. Imperial descendants move down one degree in rank with each generation and when the third descendant has reached the level of the people again, the fu reverts to the crown. The occupants of fus may have eunuchs attached to their establishments, and to the remotest generation they may wear the yellow gir dle of imperial descent. There have been yellow-belted teachers, and even domestic servants in foreign employ, starvelings of imperial ancestry who took their few dollars with plebeian gratitude.

All the legations are in that quarter of the Tartar city where Mongols, Ti

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betans, Koreans, and other tribute-bearing visitors were always lodged, and where the Mongols still have a street to themselves. The French, German, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian legations, the club, the hotel, the bank, and the two foreign stores are grouped closely together, facing and touching one another half-way down Legation Street; and, across a once splendid bridge, the American and Russian legations face, and the British legation, adjoining, stretches along an iufragrant canal, or open sewer, that drains away from lakes in the palace grounds. The British is the largest establishment, the five-acre compound always sheltering from forty to fifty British souls or "mouths" in the sordid Chinese expression. All these European legations and the Japanese legation have their corps of student-interpreters, university graduates sent out for two years' study of the Chinese written and spoken language, the Pekingese or mandarian court dialect used by the official class throughout the empire. At the completion of their prescribed course under their minister's charge, they are drafted to the consulates, are steadily promoted in line of seniority, and retire on pensions after twenty-five years' service.

All these official European residences are maintained on a scale of considerable splendor, and the sudden transfers from the noisome streets to the

beautiful parks and garden compounds, the drawing-rooms and ball-rooms, with their brilliant companies living and amusing themselves exactly as in Europe, are among the greatest contrasts and surprises of Peking. The picked diplomats of all Europe are sent to Peking, lodged sumptuously, paid high salaries, and sustained by the certainty of promotions and rewards after a useful term at Peking-all but the American minister, who is crowded in small rented premises, is paid about a fourth as much as the other envoys, and, coming untrained to his career, has the cheerful certainty of being put out of office as soon as he has learned his business and another President is elected, his stay in Peking on a meagre salary, a sufficient incident in itself, leading to nothing further officially. The United States does not maintain student-interpreters at Peking, and the legation has so far drafted its interpreters from the mission boards.

Such interpreters, having usually given most attention to the local dialects of the people, must then acquire the elaborate and specialized idioms of the official class. Dr. Peter Parker and the great Wells Williams are the only sinologues, or Chinese scholars, who have lent lustre to the roll of American diplomats serving in China.

The diplomats in exile lead a narrow, busy life among themselves, occupied with their social amusements and feuds, often well satisfied with Peking after their first month's disgust, resentment and homesickness, and even becoming sensitive to any criticism or disparagement of the place. They have their club, the tennis-courts of which are flooded and roofed over as a skating-rink, their spring and autumn races at a track beyond the walls, frequent garden parties and picnic teas in the open seasons, and a busy round of state dinners and balls all winter.

For the nearly forty years that the

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fine flowers of European diplomacy have been transplanted to Peking, they have been content to wallow along this. filthy Legation street, breathing its dust, sickened with its mud and stenches, the highway before their doors a general sewer and dumping-ground for offensive refuse of every kind. street is all gutter save where there are fragmentary attempts at a raised mudbank footwalk beside the house walls, for use when the cartway between is too deep a mud-slough. "We are here sufferance, under protest, you know," say the meek and lowly dipiomats. "We must not offend Chinese prejudices." Moreover, all the legations would not subscribe to an attempted improvement fund, nor all unite in demanding that the Chinese should clean, light, pave, and drain Legation Street. That jealousy of the great Powers so ironically termed the "Concert of Europe," is as much to blame for the sanitary situation of Peking as for affairs in Crete and Armenia.

on

The whole stay of the envoys at Peking has been a long story of trial and fruitless effort, of rebuff and covert insults. It was unfortunate that their residence began without the refugee Emperor being forced to come down from Jehol and receive them with honors and due courtesy, and that the long regency of the two secluded empresses continued the evasion of personal audiences, since precedent and custom soon crystallize in fixed laws to the Chinese. In the first years of their disgrace and defeat, the officials were civil and courteous, gracious and kindly in their intercourse with diplomats: but in a few years they recovered their aplomb, found their lost "face," and became as insolent, arrogant, contemptuous, and overbearing as they had been before the war, and have continued to be, save in other brief moments of humiliation and defeat, ever since.

The audience question was just reaching the hopeful and enlightened stage when the coup d'état unsettled things. There have been no social relations between the diplomatic corps and the court circle, no meeting or mingling save for the formal presentation of credentials, the dreary New Year's audiences in the palace inclosure, the ladies' audience in 1898, and the formal exchange of visits with the members of the Board of the Tsung-li Yamun, and, in general, none know less of Chinese character and life than those officially acquainted with the Emperor of China. No Chinese official dares maintain intimate social relations with the legations, even those who have appreciated and keenly enjoyed the social lite and official hospitalities of London, Faris, Tokio, and Washington, relapsing into strange conservatism and churlishness, the usual contemptuous attitude of the Manchu officials, when they return to Peking. Even then they are denounced to the throne for "intimacy with foreigners," black-balled and cold-shouldered at their clubs, and persecuted into retirement by jealous ones, who consider association with foreigners a sure sign of disloyalty. Even the needy literati, who teach Chinese at the different legations, would scorn to recognize their foreign pupils on the street or in the presence of any other Chinese, and the contempt of grandees and petty button-folk as they pass one on the streets of Peking is something to remember in one's hour of pride.

During recent years, Peking has been such a hot-bed of intrigue, secret conventions, and concession-seeking, of high-handed and underhanded proceedings, that a diplomat's life has not been a happy one, nor his position a sinecure. With coup d'états before breakfast, executions over night, rioting soldiers at the railway-station, mobs stoning legation carts and chairs

at will, and telegraphic communication broken whenever the soldiers could reach the wires, the legations called for guards of their own marines in the autumn of 1898. Thirty or forty guards were sent to different European legations, but the Russian legation required seventy men-at-arms and Cossacks to protect it. Last to arrive were nine marines to defend the modest premises rented to the great republic of the United States of America, the want of actual roof-area to shelter more guards obliging the American minister to ask that the other marines. should remain at Tientsin, eighty miles away. By renting a Chinese house, eighteen marines were finally quartered near the legation. This would have been farcical and laughable, humiliating to American pride only, if there had not been real danger and need for guards for the litthe community of foreign diplomats, shut like rats in a trap in a double-walled city of an estimated million three hundred thousand fanatic, foreign-hating Chinese, with a more hostile and lawless army of sixty thousand vicious Chinese soldiers without the walls and scattered over the country toward Tientsin.

*

Every servant in a foreign establishment in Peking is a spy and informer of some degree; espionage is a regular business; and the table-talk, visitinglist, card-tray, and scrap-basket, with full accounts of all comings and goings, sayings and doings of any envoy or foreigner in Peking, are regularly offered for purchase by recognized purveyors of such news. One often catches a glimpse of concentrated attention on the face of the turbaned servants standing behind dining-room chairs, that convinces one of this feature of capital life. Diplomatic secrets are fairly impossible in such an atmosphere. Every secret convention and conces

Every

sion is soon blazoned abroad. word the British minister uttered at the Tsung-li Yamun was reported to the Russian legation with almost electric promptness, until the envoy threatened to suspend negotiations and withdraw. Wily concessionaries know each night where their rivals are dining and what they have said; whether any

piece of written paper has passed, and what has gone on at each legation in Peking and each consulate at Tientsin. Every legation keyhole, crack, and chink has its eye and ear at critical times, and by a multiplication in imagination one arrives at an idea of what the palace may be like.

IN THE DAY OF TERROR.*

One memorable night during that same autumn season our village was startled by a fearful cry. "Les patriotes! Les patriotes!" and "Liberté!" rang through the streets and set the echoes trembling. The tramp of many feet and the shouts of frenzied voices filled the air. Torches flashed, displaying loathsome and angry faces; and people awoke from their peaceful slumber to know that for them the day of terror was come. The wild multitudes bore down upon noble dwellings, seized and sacked all that fell in their way. It was as if a flood of vultures had swooped upon our innocent village.

The Chevalier de la Brête had been sitting at his oriel window, the one beneath the gray gable yonder. His eyes had found no sleep that night, and he was steeped in a strange, fearful reverie when the cry roused him. He leaned out to listen, and immediately a horrible sight rose before his eyes. The seigniory was surrounded by a furious mob, inhuman yells were threatening it, a black cloud of smoke curled round its base and enveloped it. Now it burst into scarlet flames, rising higher and higher, and the noble edifice towered white and terrified above the

From Tales of an Old Chateau. By Marguerite Bouvet. Copyright 1899 by A. C. McClurg & Co. Price $1.25.

ghastly spectacle. The south and east walls were soon ablaze. One casement after another burst open, emitting a flood of fire, and the vandals had gathered around it to witness with fiendish glee the birth of their holocaust to freedom.

The Chevalier looked aghast, but only for the hundredth part of a second. Quick he leaped from his chair-by what miracle he found strength heaven alone knows-and rushed out of his dwelling. The next instant old Jacques was beside him.

"In God's name, monsieur, whither?" he cried, laying hold of his master. "Stay me not, but do thou follow me. A woman and a child are at the farthermost window of the north wing, and beckoning here for help. Dost thou hear?"

His eyes were luminous with a sudden rush of life. His every nerve quivered and his lips were set, as he made his perilous way to the one unattacked angle of the chateau.

Jacques, meanwhile, beguiled some half-drunken stragglers out of his path with promises of copious draughts of something better than the scorched blood of aristocrats.

When the Chevalier reached the spot, the woman's face had disappeared from the window, but the child's golden

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