times out of ten shots at a distance of about twenty-five yards.  He was taught to ride on horseback, though up to the day of his death he never took part in any great hunting expeditions, such as were frequently indulged in by earlier emperors of the present dynasty.  He learnt to read and write Chinese, though what progress he had made in the study of the Classics was of course only known to his teachers.  Painting may or may not have been an Imperial hobby; but it is quite certain that the drama received more perhaps than its full share of patronage.  The ladies and eunuchs of the palace are notoriously fond of whiling away much of their monotonous existence in watching the grave antics of professional tragedians and laughing at the broad jokes of the low-comedy man, with his comic voice and funnily-painted face.  Listening to the tunes prescribed by the Book of Ceremonies, and dining in solemn solitary grandeur off the eight[*] precious kinds of food set apart for the sovereign, his late Majesty passed his boyhood, until in 1872 he married the fair A-lu-te, and practically ascended the dragon throne of his ancestors.  Up to that time the Empresses-Dowager, hidden behind a bamboo screen, had transacted business with the members of the Privy Council, signing all documents of State with the vermilion pencil for and on behalf of the young Emperor, but probably without even going through the formality of asking his assent.  The marriage of the Emperor of China seemed to wake people up from their normal apathy, so that for a few months European eyes were actually directed towards the Flowery Land, and the Illustrated London News, with praiseworthy zeal, sent out a special correspondent, whose valuable contributions to that journal will be a record for ever.  The ceremony, however, was hardly over before a bitter drop rose in the Imperial cup.  Barbarians from beyond the sea came forward to claim the right of personal interview with the sovereign of all under Heaven.  The story of the first audience is still fresh in our memories; the trivial difficulties introduced by obstructive statesmen at every stage of the proceedings, questions of etiquette and precedence raised at every turn, until finally the kotow was triumphantly rejected and five bows substituted in its stead.  Every one saw the curt paragraph in the Peking Gazette, which notified that on such a day and at such an hour the foreign envoys had been admitted to an interview with the Emperor.  We all laughed over the silly story so sedulously spread by the Chinese to every corner of the Empire, that our Minister’s knees had knocked together from terror when Phaeton-like he had obtained his dangerous request; that he fell down flat in the very presence, breaking all over into a profuse perspiration, and that the haughty prince who had acted as his conductor chid him for his want of course, bestowing upon him the contemptuous nickname of “chicken-feather.”

    [*] These are—­bears’ paws, deers’ tail, ducks’ tongues, torpedos’
    roe, camels’ humps, monkeys’ lips, carps’ tails, and beef-marrow.