to be Mr Forrest, an interpreter in the British consular establishment.[1] Mr Forrest draws a vivid picture of the homes of the different Taeping-wangs. He tells us of his Excellency Le, who was building a gorgeous yamun, “upon which upwards of a thousand workmen were engaged—some building, some carving stone and wood, and not a few standing with a bundle of rattans in their hands ready to inflict blows on any one shirking his work. A great portion of the building is already completed, and the whole will be a good specimen of a Chinese yamun of the old style, with its network of beams at the gables, its large wooden columns, and fantastic carvings. Asking what the workmen were paid, Le laughingly replied,—‘You English pay for work; we Taepings know better. Is not ours a truly great Empire?’” In front of the Kan-wang’s palace were two orchestras, painted over with dragons, diablerie, Chinese characters, and the beatitudes from St Matthew! The Kan-wang is, it seems, a hearty fat individual, forty years of age, and very intelligent. He can shake hands like an Englishman, and say, “How do you do?” Mr Chalmers’s care in his education was evinced by his knowledge of geography especially, and the number of books of reference by which he was surrounded. “His sanctum is quite a museum in its way; a fine cheerful room facing a garden of flowers, with a large bed of Soochow manufacture for its principal article of furniture. The bed is covered with jade ornaments, and hung with rich yellow curtains. Tables line the sides of this chamber, and they are loaded with the strangest conglomeration of articles: a telescope on a moving pedestal, a gun-box, three Colt’s revolvers useless from rust, a box of percussion-caps, ditto of vestas, Windsor soap, a Woolwich manual of fortification, and a Holy Bible; any amount of Chinese books, five clocks, broken barometers, ink-stones, and dirty rags, fans mounted in silver, jade-stone drinking-cups, gold and silver platters, chopsticks, English port-wine bottles, and Coward’s mixed pickles. About the apartment were suspended an English naval sword, some dragoon-caps, a couple of Japanese knives, two French plates, an engraving of the Holy Well in Flintshire, and lying on the bed was a mass of silver ingots tied up in a cloth.” Amidst this collection of loot, the Kan-wang could give a neat dinner and plenty of wine, for which he had an especial dispensation. Our informant then adds that Kan-wang is “a good fellow, and merely accommodates his Christianity to his tastes and habits”—an opinion in which we agree, only substituting the words arch-knave for good fellow. Hear, for instance, what Mr Roberts says of him, in January 1862:—