and that the responsibility of seeing that it was carried out rests with others.  If this be true—­and you will no doubt think so—­I might have returned at once, at least after Japan.  But is it true?  Could I, in fairness to my country, or, in what I trust you believe comes second in the rank of motives with me, to my own reputation, leave the work which I had undertaken unfinished?...  Besides, I own that I have a conscientious feeling on the subject.  I am sure that in our relations with these Chinese we have acted scandalously, and I would not have been a party to the measures of violence which have taken place, if I had not believed that I could work out of them some good for them.  Could I leave this, the really noblest part of my task, to be worked out by others?  Anyone could have obtained the Treaty of Tientsin.  What was really meritorious was, that it should have been obtained at so small a cost of human suffering.  But this is also what discredits it in the eyes of many, of almost all here.  If we had carried on war for some years; if we had carried misery and desolation all over the Empire; it would have been thought quite natural that the Emperor should have been reduced to accept the terms imposed upon him at Tientsin.  But to do all this by means of a demonstration at Tientsin!  The announcement was received with a yell of derision by connoisseurs and baffled speculators in tea.  And indeed there was some ground for scepticism.  It would have been very easy to manage matters here, so as to bring into question all the privileges which we had acquired by that Treaty.  Even then we should have gained a great deal by it; because when we came to assert those rights by force, we should have had a good, instead of a bad casus belli.  But I was desirous, if possible, to avoid the necessity for further recurrence to force; and it required some skill to do this.  This has been my motive for protracting my stay.

[Sidenote:  The tariff signed.]

H.M.S.  ’Furious.’—­November 8th.—­I write a line to tell you that I got over the signature of my tariff, &c., very satisfactorily this morning, and set off in peace with all men, including Chinese Plenipotentiaries, and colleagues European and American, on my way up the Yangtze Kiang.  We are penetrating into unknown regions, but I trust shortly to be able to report to you my return, and all the novelties I shall have seen.

[Sidenote:  Afloat on the Yangtze Kiang.]

This morning at ten, I went to a temple which lies exactly between the foreign settlement and the Chinese town of Shanghae, to meet there the Imperial Commissioners, and to sign the tariff.  We took with us the photographs which Jocelyn had done for them, and which we had framed.  They were greatly delighted, and altogether my poor friends seemed in better spirits than I had before seen them in.  We passed from photography to the electric telegraph, and I represented to them the