to Pekin with so much honour to himself and to those under his command—­and which, moreover, I make bold in the presence of this company to say, the people of this country entertained—­of an atrocious crime, which, if it had passed unpunished, would have placed in jeopardy the life of every European in China, I felt that the time had come when I must choose between the indulgence of a not unnatural sensibility and the performance of a painful duty.  The alternative is not a pleasant one; but I trust that there is no man serving the Crown in a responsible position who would hesitate when it is presented to him as to the decision at which he should arrive.[2] And now, Sir, to pass to another topic, I have been repeatedly asked whether, in my opinion, the interests of art in this country are likely to be in any degree promoted by the opening up of China.  I must say, in reply, that I do not think that in matters of art we have much to learn from that country, but I am not quite prepared to admit that even in this department we can gain nothing from them.  The distinguishing characteristic of the Chinese mind is this—­that at all points of the circle described by man’s intelligence, it seems occasionally to have caught glimpses of a heaven far beyond the range of its ordinary ken and vision.  It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to military supremacy when it invented gunpowder, some centuries before the discovery was made by any other nation.  It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to maritime supremacy when it made, at a period equally remote, the discovery of the mariner’s compass.  It caught a glimpse of the path which leads to literary supremacy when, in the tenth century, it invented the printing press; and, as my illustrious friend on my right (Sir E. Landseer) has reminded me, it has caught from time to time glimpses of the beautiful in colour and design.  But in the hands of the Chinese themselves the invention of gunpowder has exploded in crackers and harmless fireworks.  The mariner’s compass has produced nothing better than the coasting junk.  The art of printing has stagnated in stereotyped editions of Confucius, and the most cynical representations of the grotesque have been the principal products of Chinese conceptions of the sublime and beautiful.  Nevertheless, I am disposed to believe that under this mass of abortions and rubbish there lie hidden some sparks of a diviner fire, which the genius of my countrymen may gather and nurse into a flame.

[Sidenote:  Dinner at the Mansion House.]

A few days afterwards, at a dinner given at the Mansion House in his honour, he was again greeted with more than common enthusiasm.  In responding, after giving an account of the objects that had been sought and the results that had been achieved in the East, he concluded his speech by impressing on the merchants of England, in words which may be regarded as his final and farewell utterance on the subject, that with them must now chiefly lie the responsibility of aiding or retarding the development of China, and thus of determining the place she shall hold in the commonwealth of nations.