filment. However, I will hope for the best. At five o'clock on Wednesday next I shall expect to see you at Qvingdean Grange, and my friends must then abide your scrutiny."

"And if Captain Tattersall, when he does see them, be not delighted to lend them aid, he is not the man I take him for," said Clavering.

"Well, we shall see," replied the skipper, rising. "Since time presses, I will go and see about getting in my cargo at once."

66

Stay, Tattersall," cried Clavering, filling the skipper's glass. "One toast ere you go; I'm sure you won't refuse it: May the king enjoy his own again!"

"May the king enjoy his own again!" cried the skipper, emptying the glass; and, he added, significantly, "if I can help him to it, I will. What was that noise? I thought I heard some one suddenly start up in the next room."

"Very likely," replied Clavering. "The room is occupied by an Independent minister, lately of Ovingdean. But he couldn't

overhear us."

"I hope not," replied Tattersall. "I hate the Independents. Adieu, gentlemen. On Wednesday, at five."

"Till then adieu, captain," said Gunter. "And harkye, don't mention a word that has passed to your wife-if you happen to possess one."

"No fear of my blabbing, colonel," replied Tattersall. And he quitted the room.

Clavering went out immediately after him, and found that the door of the adjoining room was open, and the apartment vacant. Micklegift, if he had been there, was gone.

The two gentlemen did not remain much longer at the Dolphin, but paid their reckoning and called for their horses, which were soon brought out by John Habergeon. They then rode through Old Shoreham, and kept along the Bramber road, on the banks of the Arun, until they reached the bridge.

Here they dismissed John Habergeon, who was directed by Clavering to pay a secret visit that night to Ovingdean Grange, and acquaint his father that all had been satisfactorily arranged, and that he and his friends might be expected on Wednesday afternoon. Charged with this message, of the importance of which, insignificant as it sounded, he was well aware, the old trooper rode up the acclivities on the right of the valley, and soon disappeared.

Having crossed the bridge, the two gentlemen pursued the high road to Chichester, and reached Racton late in the day, without misadventure.

THE FRENCH EMBASSY IN CHINA.*

THE French embassy, which under Baron Gros co-operated with that of Lord Elgin during the eventful years of 1857 and 1858, was composed of the baron himself, M. du Chesne de Bellecourt, and Viscount de Contades, secretaries, and Marquis de Mogès and Count de la Tour Maubourg, attachés of embassy. The Marquis de Mogès has been to the French embassy what Mr. Oliphant was to the English-viz. its historiographer; and it cannot-the more especially as the French and English nations are in armed alliance to bring the Chinese to a sense of the fitness of things, and the same chief personages are about to proceed once more to the arena of their pristine unsuccessful negotiations-but be interesting to study this astute, perverse, and obstinate people, as seen with French eyes, and contemplated from a French point of view.

Doing ample justice, then, on their arrival at Hong-Kong, to the wondrous progress of the place and to the "génie colonisateur" of the English, which has made of it the most frequented port of the neighbourhood, and concentrated a population of seventy thousand souls where a few years ago only a few fishermen sought refuge from the rapacity of pirates, still our diplomatist attests that greater regard has been paid to quantity than to quality in regard to the sources whence the population has been derived, and he distinctly tells us that the British colony has become the head-quarters of all the bandits of the river of Canton. The governor, Sir John Bowring, he says, admitted to us that he had sold in the past year no less than four thousand guns of various calibre to the pirates and other possessors of junks in the river. This is a strange statement to make, for it would appear as if in our commercial cupidity we supplied the pirates with means of offence and defence, only afterwards to knock them about their ears. The white and black police of Sir John, we are also told, has the musket on the shoulder day and night, and yet it has the greatest difficulty to prevent robberies. "What can be expected, or what can be done," is added as a corollary, "when one has the whole population morally against one?" We had hoped better things from the contact of semi-barbarism and civilisation.

"Baron Gros," we are told, "having seriously reflected, and having had long interviews with the French and English authorities in China, resolved upon war. The north-west monsoon and the ice did not permit of war being carried on at this season of the year in Pecheli, so winter could be turned to account by attacking Canton and taking revenge for the particular misdeeds of the proud viceroy of the two Kwangs against France. On the advent of spring, the belligerents would make their way to the north to require from the Chinese government an account of the more general misdeeds of the Celestial Empire against France." What a waste of words and precious time must have been expended on the political rupture of the English with Commissioner Yeh-the case of the Arrow-the vexations of Sir John Bowring and of Mr. Parkes, and

Souvenirs d'une Ambassade en Chine et au Japon en 1857 et 1858. Par le Marquis de Mogès. Paris: Hachette et Cie.

the hostile proceedings of Admiral Seymour, backed by Elliott and Keppel in the winter of 1856-57; since, according to this statement, they had nothing to do with the ultimate reduction of Canton in 1858, which was brought about by Baron Gros having resolved upon war in the spring of that year.

It is admitted, however, that two batches of British marines had arrived before the French plenipotentiary had come to his decision to carry on war, and that they had occupied the forts taken from the Chinese-it does not say by whom. "On les y place dans les forts enlevés aux Chinois." It is also admitted that forty-five English vessels of war blocked the river, and that the Cantonese were beginning to be alarmed at the aspect of affairs, when at length, after a brief visit to Macao, the home of Camoëns and the city of the past-Hong-Kong being that of the present the French ascended to Bocca Tigris, where the river, up to that point an estuary, narrows between hills dotted with Chinese forts. We are told that these used to present themselves with pride to foreign ships, but the English guns had done justice to their pretensions, and red jackets mounted guard on their crumbling walls. The English sailors also are described as amusing themselves with firing into the flocks of wild geese and ducks that passed to and fro, bringing down numbers of them, till Admiral Seymour forbade the fun. The French, on their side, found a resource in watching the poverty-stricken Chinese, fishing, with landing-nets made fast to the end of bamboos, for bits of bread, biscuit, or orange-peel, that fell over the ship's side. Thanks to Admiral Seymour's Chinese pilot, the Audacieuse was steered safely up to Whampoa, and now we first hear of the "griefs de la France et de l'Angleterre" as united against "le hautain gouverneur-général des deux Kwangs." The reply of the said haughty Chinese to the ultimatum of the ambassadors, "ne se fait point longtemps attendre; elle est adressée, le 14 Décembre, au Baron Gros." Nothing can be more plain: the high dignitary only condescended to reply to the French plenipotentiary; yet we are told, a moment afterwards, that the said reply was ambiguous, frivolous, and in bad faith, and that made to Lord Elgin was no less so. Our noble diplomatist and historiographer appears here to have transferred a little of the ambiguity of style so characteristic of the Chinese into the language of Corneille and Voltaire.

A grand council of war having been held on board the Audacieuse, Admiral Rigault de Genouilly announced the opening of the campaign to the sailors in an energetic order of the day, and the smaller vessels broke up from their anchorage. "Our men, with their linen gaiters, their knapsacks on their backs, carrying five days' provisions, besides their arms and ammunition, were remarkable for their martial air." On the 28th of December, the four gun-boats Dragonne, Avalanche, Mitraille, and Fusée, and the corvette Phlégéton and the aviso Marceau, not to mention a crowd of English gun-boats and corvettes, opened fire upon the town. The English battery on Dutch Folly also did wonders, and six hundred English took possession of French Folly, near which the landing was effected the next night.

The French, as they advanced, were not a little astonished at the reception they met with. Gingalls, matchlocks, rockets, and arrows rained upon them with no small effect. They wished, we are told, to burn the

village where Captain Hackett was afterwards treacherously murdered, but General Straubenzee would not permit it. The murderer was, according to Oliphant, brought up to head-quarters and hanged the same evening. According to M. de Mogès, he was dragged by the hair of the head to the front of the Chinese army, and hanged upon a tree. "The face of this man," he adds, "thus dragged by the hair by the furious English soldiery, was horrible to contemplate." Considering that the French embassy had taken up their quarters on board the Pri mauguet and the Durance, in front of Barrier Fort, two miles from Canton, did the marquis see the man's countenance, or is it not a tale of the French marines? The capture of Lin's Fort by the sergeant of marines, Martin des Pallières, is told with great modesty, but the narrative lacks the fun of Oliphant's account of the tricolor in the breechespocket. Upon the occasion of the next day's escalade of the walls of the town, Oliphant tells us that Major Luard was the first man on the walls, closely followed by a French officer and Colonel Graham of the 59th; Lieutenant Stewart, R.E., however, would have disputed this honour with the foremost, had not his ladder given way. M. de Mogès's version presents a pleasing variety: "One ladder gave way, and an English officer broke his back. A quartermaster of the Capricieuse was first on the wall."

The day after the assault the marquis made a personal visit to the strange admixture of the comical with the sad that presented itself within the captured city. So elevated, however, did he feel by the triumph, that he did not hesitate to declare that two regiments of chasseurs à pied and two regiments of Zouaves, with a few squadrons of cavalry, could conquer all China! A sad incident happened in the mean time to some of the crew of the Audacieuse. A party had been detached on shore to unload some shells that had been picked up in the city, and which had not exploded. By some accident one of them went off between a seaman's legs, and tore him into fragments. Another in front of him had his arms and legs carried off, and died soon after. Five others were horribly mutilated.

Canton had fallen; the members of the embassy had to exchange the comforts of the Club Hotel for their narrow cabins, and the shelter of Victoria Harbour for wind and rain and a heavy sea. Lord Elgin had started for Amoy, Ningpo, and Fou-tchou-Fou; Baron Gros followed a week after for Shanghai direct. The excursion made by Oliphant and De Contades to Soo-chow, in company with Messrs. Robertson and Montigny, the English and French consuls at Shanghai, and the American vice-consul (M. de Mogès simply says that "M. de Montigny, French consul of France at Shanghai, with his great experience of China, and that of his functionaries, answered for the success of the enterprise"), had taken place in the interim, and had filled the embassy with hopes of a proximate pacific solution of the "Chinese question."

The embassy had, we said, sailed direct for Shanghai, but its members were but too happy to obtain a little respite from sea-sickness at Amoy. They viewed that place also, as might be expected, with very different eyes to those of Oliphant. Everything was couleur de rose. The Fokiens were handsomer than the Cantonese. Their language was peculiar, as was also their dress, which approximated to the Turkish. It is true

that the streets were narrow and dirty, but the shops were prettily lighted up with paper lanterns, and there were no end of sing-songs, or open-air concerts, at which they sang songs, to the infinite delight of the exiled of the Champs Elysées. At Shanghai and Canton the people speak a little English, but at Amoy only Spanish, derived from their intercourse with the Philippines. There were about sixty English in the town, a few Americans, and no French. Amoy, we are further told (but the impression is corrected afterwards), is the only town where Europeans are viewed by the natives with a favourable eye, and the English and Chinese ladies exchange visits.

Quitting the Audacieuse for the Fusée, the embassy entered the Yang-tse-Kiang, the great commercial artery of the Chinese Empire, and thence threading their way, not without difficulty, through the forest of junks on the Whampoa, it reached Shanghai. Here the members seem to have felt quite at home, for they were received at the Hôtel du Commerce, kept by M. Barraud, ancien maître d'hôtel de la Constantine. There was also a French quarter, the best situated we are told, but the least built over of the three; but streets with French names were marked out, and agens de police with tricolored badges protected the wilderness. M. de Mogès attests, on the authority of M. de Montigny, that the inhabitants of Kiang-nan are well disposed towards Europeans (this, as at Amoy, in Fo-kien, and in face of many hasty insinuations to the contrary, dropped at hap-hazard through the book), and the Europeans wander without hurt or hindrance in the interior. There is plenty of shooting and fishing, and during the summer heats the residents seek shelter in wooded hills some ten leagues' distance. Every family has also its junk for river and lake excursions. The men from Canton were the greatest pests of the town. They were turbulent and arrogant, and too

often thieves and murderers.

The intercourse of the members of the embassy with the Chinese mandarins was replete with incidents. Their consul assured them, on one occasion, that they had been invited to a splendid dinner. They could only remember a frightful display of birds'-nests, sharks' fins, holothuriæ, or sea-worms, plovers' eggs, almond milk (the Chinese never drink cow's milk, except medicinally), warm Chinese wine, and alcohol from rice (raki). They were, however, most embarrassed by fruit being presented first, and soup at the end of the repast. There was neither bread nor water. Then there was a display of "tigers"-the imperial guard-on whose yellow tunics are depicted the eyes, ears, and head of the ferocious monster whose name they bear. For half an hour these braves went through the most fantastic exercises, defying one another by voice and gesture, and displaying an amount of noise and activity that was quite overwhelming. The Chinese, adds M. de Mogès, speaking here of the people of Shanghai, give up little of their time to pleasure; they are solely devoted to business. It is not likely that a nation so disposed will long favour, or even permanently abide by, the exclusive system forced upon them by their Mantchu-Tartar conquerors. M. de Mogès speaks of the commercial movement in Shanghai in the same hopeful spirit as our own writers. There are few places in the world, he says, to compare with it. One hundred and seven European merchantmen were moored in the Whampoa, and there was not space for