Ningpo was one of the places which had been treated with more than ordinary severity in the last war.  It was also one of the places in which the natives showed the most friendly disposition towards foreigners.  To the resident traders the inference was obvious:  the severity was the cause of the friendly disposition, and it had only to be applied elsewhere to produce the like results.  With evident satisfaction Lord Elgin sets himself, in an official despatch, to refute this reasoning.  After observing that the natives showed rather an exaggeration than a defect of the desire to live peaceably with foreigners, he proceeds:—­

The state of Ningpo in this respect furnishes their favourite and, perhaps, most plausible argument, to that class of persons who advocate what is styled a vigorous policy in China; in other words, a policy which consists in resorting to the most violent measures of coercion and repression on the slenderest provocations.  They say, ’Remember what happened at Ningpo during the last war, and observe the consideration and respect which is evinced towards you there.  Treat other towns in China likewise, and the result will be the same.’  I question the soundness of this inference.  Ningpo is situated on the south-eastern verge of the mighty valley of the Yang-tze-kiang, which is inhabited by a population the most inoffensive, perhaps, both by disposition and habit, of any on the surface of the earth.  Their amenity towards the foreigner is due, I apprehend, to temperament, as much, at least, as to the recollection of the violence which they may have sustained at his hands.

I have made it a point, whenever I have met missionaries or others who have penetrated into the interior from Ningpo and Shanghae, to ask them what treatment they experienced on those expeditions, and the answer has almost invariably been that, at points remote from those to which foreigners have access, there was no diminution, but on the contrary rather an enhancement, of the courtesy exhibited towards them by the natives.

[Sidenote:  Missionary schools.]

H.M.S.  ’Furious.’—­March 20th.—­Yesterday, I called on a clergyman to see Miss Aldersey,—­a remarkable lady, who came out here immediately after the last war, and has been devoting herself and her fortune to the education and Christianisation of the Chinese at Ningpo.  She seems a nice person, but I could not get as much conversation with her as I wished, because the Bishop, &c., were present all the time.  She has to pay the girls a trifle, as an equivalent for what their labour is worth, for coming to her school, or to board them and keep them, as it is not at all in the ideas of the Chinese that women should be educated.  She does not seem to have got the entree into Chinese houses of the richer class.  Mrs. Russell (wife of the English clergyman), who speaks the language, has obtained it a little.  I cannot make out