In 1868 came the affair of the Burlingame Mission, with which—­as with all the other events of the time in China—­Robert Hart had much to do.  Mr. Burlingame was then United States Minister in Peking, a personal friend of the I.G.’s and a most charming man with a genius for hospitality.  Nothing pleased him more than to see half a dozen nationalities seated at his table.  At one of these little dinners Burlingame noticed that a certain discussion was growing too serious and heated.  Some of his guests were on the point of losing their tempers, for Envoys Extraordinary dislike being disagreed with, even by Ministers Plenipotentiary.  He therefore picked up his glass of sherry in the most courtly manner in the world, held it to the light, studied it critically from every point of view, turning it now this way, now that.

“Look,” said he suddenly, addressing the table in his most charming manner, “did you ever see sherry exactly like that before?  Do you notice its peculiar colour?  See how it shines—­yellow in one light, reddish brown in another.”

When he had drawn the interest, he went on to give the most delightful little lecture on sherries, their similarities, their differences, and their making, till the whole table listened with rapt attention and, listening, forgot their perilous discussion and the heat and irritation they had spent upon it.

These very qualities of tact and polish, combined with dignity and agreeable manners, made Mr. Burlingame popular with the courtly Chinese officials, and when he was about to return to his own country some of the Wai-Wu-Pu (Foreign Office) Ministers asked him to speak a good word for China in the United States.  “Was not that an excellent idea?” they asked the I.G. next day.  He agreed, and out of this trivial incident grew the Burlingame Mission to all the courts of Europe.  Alas! the idea was visionary rather than practical, and doomed to disappointment—­a disappointment which, luckily, Mr. Burlingame himself never felt keenly, since he died at St. Petersburg while his tour was still uncompleted.

At the same time that he was concerned with the Mission, the I.G. was “setting his house in order” with very practical measures.  New Regulations for Pilotage, Rules for the Joint Investigation (Chinese and Consular) of Disputed Customs Cases, Rules for Coolie Emigration, each in turn claimed his attention, and it was he also who arranged with the Chinese that one-tenth of the tonnage dues—­afterwards raised to seven-tenths—­should be devoted to port improvements and lighting the coasts.  Until he took the matter in hand, vessels had been obliged to grope around the difficult China coast in total darkness; to-day, thanks to his foresight, lighthouses are dotted from Newchang in the north to Hainan in the south, and a little fleet of three Revenue cruisers serves them.