It is pleasant (he said)—­perhaps it is one of the sweetest flowers we cull on the path of this rugged life—­to find ourselves among old friends after a long absence, and to find their hearts beat as true and warm as ever.  I am deeply gratified by the flattering terms in which my public services have been referred to in this address, but I am still more gratified by the welcome which you have tendered to me to-day....  Gentlemen, I have been for many years very much, perhaps too much of a wanderer, and it has been my fortune to receive from our countrymen established in different parts of the world tokens of their regard and consideration.  The very last address of felicitation I received before I landed at Dover the other day was from a body of my countrymen established in the Philippines—­a group of Spanish islands in the far East, near the equator.  But allow me to say that among all these tokens, those most grateful and agreeable to me are those which I receive from friends and neighbours at home.  And, perhaps, I appreciate these tokens the more highly, because I am conscious that the very fact of my having been so much of a wanderer, has prevented me from acquiring some of those titles to their personal regard which I might have hoped to establish if I had been constantly resident among them.

[Sidenote:  Royal Academy dinner.]

About the same time he was received with marked distinction at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy in London; and the words which he spoke on that occasion have more than a mere passing interest, as illustrating the speaker’s frank and straightforward manner of dealing with a question of great delicacy, and also as containing some striking and suggestive remarks on certain mental and moral peculiarities of the Chinese people.

I am especially gratified (he said) by the great and very unexpected honour which you have done to me in drinking my health, because I trust that I may infer from it that in your judgment, Sir, and in that of this company, I am not so incorrigibly barbarous as to be incapable of feeling the humanising influences which fall upon us from the noble works of art by which we are surrounded.  And, as I have ventured to approach so nearly to the margin of a burning question, I hope that I may be allowed to take one step more in the same direction, and to assure you that no one regretted more sincerely than I did the destruction of that collection of summer-houses and kiosks, already, and previously to any act of mine, rifled of their contents, which was dignified by the title of Summer Palace of the Chinese Emperor.  But when I had satisfied myself that in no other way, except, indeed, by inflicting on this country and on China the calamity of another year of war, could I mark the sense which I entertained, which the British army entertained—­and on this point I may appeal to my gallant friend who is present here this evening, and who conducted that army triumphantly