position by allowing a large body of them to escape through his intrenchments; but in the end of last year he destroyed them altogether, and is now about to be sent against the Mohammedan rebels.

*

Tseng Kwo-fan, to whom reference has frequently been made in preceding pages, is even a greater Mandarin than Lí, and is at present the most distinguished and influential person in the Empire not of royal blood; while even of the royal family itself there are none to compare with him in influence, unless it be the youthful Emperor himself, the Dowager Empresses, and the Emperor's uncle, the Prince of Kung, who is President of the Tsung-li Yamun or the Foreign Board. He is now a man of about sixty-stout, dark, with a Chinese resemblance to Oliver Cromwell-and entered the ranks of Celestial officialdom by passing the examination of the Han-li College in 1838, the eighteenth year of the Emperor Tao-kwang, and was soon afterwards made a member of the Board of Ceremonies. In 1852, the fourth year of the Emperor Hien-fung, he retired from office, owing to the death of his mother; and whilst at home at his native town, Hseang-siang, in the province of Honan, he raised a river-fleet, and undertook the management of a body of militia which were employed against the Tai-pings, who had taken several cities in the province. Being made an Imperial Commander, he recaptured several of these cities, and destroyed a great portion of the Rebel flotilla. Immediately after this, in

* The Luh Pe, or Six Boards at Peking, are the Civil Office, the Revenue Office, the Office of Rites, the War Office, the Office of Punishments, and the Foreign Office. At the head of each are two presidents and four vice-presidents; and in each are three subordinate grades of officers-directors, under-secretaries, and controllers-besides a host of clerks. There are also several separate bureaus in each board; and the Tsung-li Yamun, or Foreign Office, has lately been extended and remodelled.

conjunction with other Imperialist forces, he entered the neighbouring province of Hupeh, and retook its capital, Woochang, along with other towns. Thus the two Hu were cleared of Tai-pings very much through his patriotic exertions. For this Tseng received a second-class button, and was made a member of the Board of War. In 1853 he moved down the Yangtsze, and attacked Kiukiang; but, owing to losing part of his fleet, he was repulsed. During the next three years he took part, along with his brother, in various operations against the Rebels on the Yangtsze and in its neighbourhood, and aided in rescuing the capital of Kiangsi from their grasp.

The death of Tseng Kwo-fan's father in 1857 led, as is usual in such cases, to his retirement from public employment for a nominal term of three years; but in 1859 he was made Commander-in-Chief in the province of Kiangsi, and raised to a higher position in the Board of War. On taking the field this energetic Mandarin soon cleared Kiangsi of Tai-pings, and was in consequence made Imperial Commissioner and Chetai, or GovernorGeneral of the Two Kiang*—that is to say, of the rich and important provinces of Nganhwui, Kiangsi, and Kiangsoo -which is one of the highest appointments that the Chinese Crown has it in its power to give. About the same time, in 1860, he was made Commander-in-Chief in the four provinces of Kiangsi, Kiangsoo, Nganhwui, and Chekiang; so he was thus placed in supreme command of all the operations against the Tai-pings, a position which he occupied for four years, until the fall of Nanking and

* This phrase, the "Two Kiang," though still often used, is apt to mislead, for it arose previous to the division of Kiangnan into the two provinces of Kiangsoo and Nganhwui. The "Two Kiang" are properly Kiangsi, "west of the river," and Kiangnan, "south of the river;" the latter including both Kiangsoo and Nganhwui.

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the suppression of the Rebellion. In 1861, the first year of the present Emperor Tung-che, he became a Cabinet Minister, but continued to direct in person the military operations against the Tai-pings. Next year, with aid of his brother Tseng Kwo-tsun and other lieutenants, he cleared the Yangtsze valley of the Rebels, with the exception of Nanking, which they still held. The appointment, on his proposal, of Lí as Governor of Kiangsoo, and the employment of Gordon's force, led to the expulsion of the Tai-pings from that province, and, on the fall of their capital, to the final suppression of the Tai-pings in 1864. Tseng Kwo-fan received a double-eyed feather, and was made Senior Guardian to the Emperor and a first-class noble of the rank of How-or Marquis, as it might most correctly be rendered in English. After the death of Prince Sankolinsin in 1865, Tseng acted successfully against the Nien-fei Rebels; and, being succeeded in his Chetaiship by his protégé Lí Hung-chang, succeeded Saukolinsin as Generalissimo of all the Imperial forces in China. Whenever in late years there has been any difference, or rumour of difference, between this great Mandarin and the Peking Government, popular report has assumed that he would proceed to the capital and ascend the dragon throne, or else found a southern empire; but he has shown no intention of making any such attempt; and if he did, it would not likely be successful, as, in such a case, the Imperial Government would probably receive the assistance of Lí and others of his protégés, on whom he would have in great part to rely. Tseng Kwo-fan, besides, is more of a soldier than of a statesman; his public life has been spent in fighting on the banks of the Yangtsze-not in exercising his wits among the bureauocracy of Peking; and he resembles the late Duke of Wellington in being strongly inclined to

wards the Conservative party of his country. By Hongkong quidnuncs he has been described as reactionary in sentiment, and as opposed to intercourse with Foreigners; but in his practice, at least so far as it is known to us, he has shown no such disposition.

As this is a somewhat personal chapter, it may not be amiss to give sketches of the chief British officials who have been brought in contact with the Chinese during recent eventful years. What may be termed the modern period commences with Sir John Bowring, who succeeded to Sir George Bonham, after a long service at the Canton Consulate, as Governor of Hongkong and Minister-Plenipotentiary to China, only to become one of the bestabused men of the day, both at home and in the Far East. A philosopher and linguist of some ability, but with a partly self-conferred reputation much beyond his real merits and acquirements, Sir John has displayed neither the scholar's devotion to ideas nor the statesman's grasp of practical principles, but has rather sunk into the scholar when he should have been a statesman, and has striven to be a man of the world when he had better have continued a philosopher. A certain jocular Mandarin understood this Minister very well, when, in answer to a complaint as to the use of the term I, or "Barbarian," in his despatches, he replied, that it was not for him, an insignificant one, to enter on linguistic discussions with so great a scholar. But Bowring exercised hardly any personal influence on our relations with China; he scarcely deserved the abuse which was heaped upon him in Parliament for his connection with the lorcha Arrow affair, and not even the angel Gabriel could win golden opinions in the position of Governor of Hongkong. When he was made Minister to China matters were in such a state that a conflict was almost unavoidable. The British mer

SIR JOHN BOWRING.

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chants in that country had long resolved on obtaining a great extension of the privileges of trade; they had been profoundly irritated by the cruel murder of six of their young men at Hwang-chu-kee, near Canton; and though the Chinese could plead treaty-rights in favour of the conservative position which they held, yet certain higher considerations forbade that their Empire should be isolated any longer. Had Sir John Bowring been a man better fitted for his position, he would in these circumstances have advised his Government to approach the Chinese authorities in an open and candid manner, stating what were the arrangements which the new time required; but instead of doing so he made himself a willing tool in the hypocritical and injurious policy of picking a quarrel with the Celestials on some dubious point of an existing treaty. I have been told on high authority that, previous to the Arrow affair, Sir John Bowring had received private instructions from the Foreign Office on no account to let any opportunity pass of commencing a quarrel with the Chinese Government; and this explains the pertinacity with which Lord Palmerston afterwards supported his subordinate, even appealing from the House of Commons to the country on that subject. Neither the lorcha case nor the alleged right of entry to Canton were points upon which a very conscientious plenipotentiary could have had recourse to arms; and Nemesis soon overtook Sir John in shape of the obloquy which he had to endure, and in his unexpected supercession by Lord Elgin as Plenipotentiary in China. Thus, if Bowring had any pleasant vision of figuring in Peking as a greater successor of Macartney and Amherst it was cruelly disappointed; and from being the holder of plenipotentiary powers in regard to four nations-Annam, China, Siam, and Japan-he found himself suddenly and unexpectedly