As far as he was personally concerned the disastrous and expensive failure long preyed upon Robert Hart’s mind.  He reproached himself bitterly for the mistake.  But the Chinese never attached the least blame to him; they showed him no diminution of respect, rather an increase.  It was on the Inspector-General H.N.  Lay that their wrath fell.  They considered that he had treated the whole matter too high-handedly, and within three months they had dismissed him and offered the post to Robert Hart.  Of course the change gave rise to much discussion, and Sherard Osborne went frankly to Hart and told him how ill-natured people were hinting that he had intrigued against Lay.  The malignity of idle gossip, however, could not turn him back.  Knowing that he had worked as loyally for his chief as for himself, he simply replied that if the public looked at it in that way, instead of refusing he would certainly accept the post.  I wonder if any instinct told him that the great day of his life was when he did accept it, or if he had any premonition of the useful and romantic career before him?

The characters of the two Inspector-Generals, the one outgoing, the other incoming, contrasted very strangely.  Lay was inclined to be dictatorial and rather impatient of Chinese methods; an excellent and clever man, but with one point of view and one only.  Hart, on the other hand, was tactful, patient, and, above all else, tolerant of other people’s prejudices.  “To grow a little catholic,” says Stevenson, “is the compensation of years.”  But Robert Hart was catholic in this broad sense even when he was young.  He would sometimes say that the habit of toleration he acquired at college, and through the most simple incident.

Seven or eight of the Belfast students were one day asked to describe what would seem to be the simplest thing in the world to describe—­a packing-case.  And yet every man, after stating the simple fact that he saw a packing-case, had something different to say about it.  One, who stood on the right, described an address written in black letters; another, who stood at one end, dwelt on the iron hoops that bound the box; a third gave prominence to the long nails studding a corner.  Thus each, according to his view-point, saw that same commonplace packing-case in a different way.  After this practical demonstration Robert Hart never in his life could grow impatient with a man who did not see exactly what he saw when both were standing on opposite sides of a question.

CHAPTER IV

ORDERED TO LIVE AT SHANGHAI—­FIRST MEETING WITH “CHINESE GORDON”—­THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN GORDON AND LI HUNG CHANG—­THE TAKING OF CHANG-CHOW-FU—­DISBANDMENT OF “THE EVER-VICTORIOUS ARMY”—­REWARDS FOR GORDON