those I have named.  The gossip is that the Emperor is occupying his time at Jehol by marrying a fourth wife (a rather expensive proceeding) and getting tipsy.  I am afraid he is not much worth; although, if the papers in the vermilion pencil, which we found in the Summer Palace, are his writing, he is not such a fool as people suppose. ...  Frederick brought with him your letters to September 10th.  I pray that you may now be rejoicing in the belief that Bruce is getting on well and happily at school.

[Sidenote:  Tientsin.] [Sidenote:  Its climate.]

Tientsin.—­November 14th.—­Here I am again in the house which I occupied two and a half months ago, and which is by far the nicest Chinese house I have seen, and its exposure to the sun is now most agreeable.  The climate is at present charming.  If nothing else had been done by these recent proceedings, the fact of placing our troops and embassy here, instead of in the south of China, would have been almost worth the trouble.  It is also a much drier climate than that of Shanghae.  We have had about seven days of rain in all, since I left Shanghae in July.  Frederick had nineteen days consecutively just before he left Shanghae.  He was not well himself then, but he is all right now.  His ride to Pekin—­eighty miles in thirty hours—­set him up again.  I found the Admiral very cordial. ...  Gros is not yet come, and I do not like to depart from here without seeing him.

He was detained at Tientsin for several days, arranging a variety of matters of detail; and it was not till the morning of the 26th of November that he found himself once more afloat on the Gulf of Pecheli, on board the ‘Ferooz,’ homeward bound.

[Sidenote:  Results of the mission.]

The general results obtained by the mission thus happily terminated cannot be better summed up than in the words of the despatch in which the Foreign Minister, Lord J. Russell, conveyed to Lord Elgin Her Majesty’s ’full approbation of his conduct in the various particulars’ above described.

‘The convention,’ he wrote, ’which you concluded with the Prince of Kung on the 24th of October is entirely satisfactory to Her Majesty’s Government.  It records the reparation made by the Emperor of China for his disregard in the previous year of his Treaty engagements; it sets Her Majesty’s Government free from an implied engagement not to insist in all particulars on the fulfilment of those engagements; it imposes upon China a fine, in the shape of an augmented rate of indemnity; it affords an additional opening for British trade; it places on a recognised footing the emigration of Chinese coolies, whose services are so important to Her Majesty’s colonial possessions; it relieves Her Majesty’s colony of Hong Kong from a source of previous annoyance; and it provides for bringing generally to the knowledge of the Chinese the engagements into which the Emperor has entered towards Great Britain.